INDIVIDUALISM 

A SYSTEM OF POLITICS 



INDIVIDUALISM 



A SYSTEM OF POLITICS 



1^ 



BY 



WOKDSWORTH DONISTHORPE 

w 
BARRISTER-AT-LAW 
AUTHOR OF 'principles OF PLUTOLOGT,' ETC. 



ILontion 

MACMILLAN AND CO. 

AND NEW YORK 
1889 

All rights reserved 



PEEFACE 

The range of subjects dealt with in the present volume is 
doubtless a wide one; but it will be found, I trust, that all 
have been treated consistently from what may be called the 
individualist standpoint. The merit of formulating this theory 
of government, and thus of laying the rough foundations upon 
which a sound art of Politics may be based, undoubtedly 
belongs to Mr. Herbert Spencer, who has contributed more to the 
scientific study of society than any other thinker — not even 
excepting Auguste Comte or John Austin. It is therefore with 
the greater regret that I find myself unable to accept either the 
principles or the conclusions set forth in Mr. Spencer's most 
popular publication on the subject — The Man v. the State, 
Though this in no way lessens the great debt of gratitude 
which all seekers after truth in this field owe to him. And 
for myself I take this opportunity of acknowledging it. 

One word as to the order of the following chapters. Had 
I followed my own inclination I should have placed them 
thus :— I, II, III, VIII, IX, XII, IV, X, V, VI, VII, XI, in 
which order I will briefly ref^ to them. But I was over- 
ruled by friendly criticism. It was urged that my readers 
would wish to know something of the practical bearing of 



VI PREFACE 

Individualism on everyday affairs before inquiring too closely 
into the philosophic basis of the theory. 

Chapter I. deals with the nature, growth, and develop- 
ment of states or organised societies ; Chapter II aims at 
forecasting the final structure of the State for governmental 
purposes ; and Chapter III seeks for the true scope of its action 
in relation to the individual units of which it is composed, and 
the resulting limitation of the liberties of the citizen. The 
reader who then passes at once to Chapter VIII will there find 
the doctrine of individualism carried to its logical extreme as 
philosophic anarchy ; while the necessary qualifications of this 
extreme view are set forth in Chapter IX. The latter* 
originally appeared in the Westminster Bevieio (July 1886), 
and is but slightly altered ; the principal addition being the 
pages showing the twofold origin of Justice. This chapter 
also contains my reasons for dissenting from some of Mr. 
Spencer's conclusions ; and Chapter XII carries the war against 
Absolutism into the domain occupied by Mr. Auberon Herbert, 
his ablest general. In Chapter IV, returning to inductive 
individualism, I analyse the conception Pro;perty, applying the 
definition reached to the solution of certain practical problems. 
Chapter X deals with the modern school of land-law reformers, 
whose views seem to me to be pretty clearly expressed in a lecture 
by Mr. C. A. Fyffe, afterwards endorsed by a cabinet minister 
who, though he has since passed out of public notice, well 
represented the neo-radical opinions of our day. Chapter V, 
by an inquiry into the true nature of Capital, lays the founda- 
tion of the system of labour capitalisation which is worked out 
in the two succeeding Chapters VI and VII. And Chapter 
XI treats of the only consistent system of politics which can 
be opposed to that of individualism, namely, socialism. 



PREFACE vii 



The doctrines of socialism are growing in popularity, not 
in this country only, but all over the civilised world ; and they 
are in my opinion the chief danger in the way of social progress. 
The apostles of this delusive gospel are legion, and inasmuch 
as they disagree among themselves to such an extent that it is 
difficult to fasten any particular teaching upon them as a 
body, I have adopted my usual plan of singling out one of the 
clearest and best among their writers, and treating his exposi- 
tion to a searching examination. 

In conclusion I would add that I have little reason to 

expect popularity for this work. It is written without any 

party sympathy whatever. And I have deliberately adopted 

a tone rather polemic than apologetic, in the belief that dull 

and mealy-mouthed disputation is less calculated to rivet the 

attention and impress the memory than a more vigorous and 

uncompromising style of criticism. And I have done this 

even when differing from those with whom I am, in the main, 

in accord. 

WOEDSWOETH DONISTHOEPE. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

The State : Its Growth and Evolution . . . i 



CHAPTEE II 

The Structure of the State .... 34 

CHAPTEE III 

The Functions of the State . . . .60 

CHAPTEE IV 

What is Property ? . . . . .90 

CHAPTEE V 

What is Capital ? . . . . . .128 

CHAPTEE VI 

The Labour Question . . . . . 152 

CHAPTEE Vn 

Labour Capitalisation . . . . .205 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTEE VIII 

PAGE 

A Word for Anarchy . . . . .253 



CHAPTER IX 
The Basis of Individualism . . . .259 

CHAPTER X 
Land-Law Keformers ..... 306 

CHAPTER XI 

An Analysis of Socialism . . . . . 327 

CHAPTER XH 

Absolutism in Politics . . . . .382 



CHAPTEE I 

THE STATE : ITS GROWTH AND EVOLUTION 

" The State is an organism." The words flow glibly from 
the tongue, but do we clearly know what we mean by the 
State ? Among the lower forms of animal life we are at a 
loss to know whether to regard certain organisms, such, for 
example, as sponges, as individuals or as aggregations of indi- 
viduals. But among the higher forms of life we have no diffi- 
culty. The animals best known to us are practically bounded 
by their skins, and it is very seldom that a question of 
individuation arises of any importance, though doubts have 
been expressed both in modern and ancient Courts of Justice 
as to whether the purchaser of a mare in foal is ipso facto 
the owner of the foal. 

In the vegetable kingdom the difficulties of individuation 
are considerably greater ; if the rose-tree is an individual, what 
shall we say to the rose ? Consider the growth of the straw- 
berry, and of the banyan, which sends down roots from its 
branches to strike into the ground and themselves become 
trunks. One such tree, if it can be called one tree, has been 
known to measure more than five hundred yards in circum- 
ference round the trunks. Some would call the growth a 
single tree, and others would describe it as a grove of trees. 

Social organisms in this respect more nearly resemble 
vegetable than animal forms. It is difficult to define and 
demarcate the individual. Those who have not reflected upon 
this difficulty may readily realise it by trying to group the 

B 



2 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

following under the heads of individual states and parts of 
states — Canada, Egypt, Servia, Hungary, Ireland, Germany, 
Sweden, Ohio, Poland, "Wales. But if, on the one hand, there 
is difficulty in deciding in certain cases, in other cases, on the 
other hand, there is no difficulty whatever, N"o one will pre- 
tend that Yorkshire and Lancashire are two different and 
separate states. We all know the meaning of France, though 
we might find some difficulty in defining even that very pre- 
cisely about the eastern boundary. Now, without attempting 
to define exactly the term State, or to follow Austin in his 
exhaustive inquiry into the question, let us take it for granted 
that in the main we understand pretty clearly what we mean 
by the term. Just as we .know, in spite of the puzzles of 
individuation, that there are such individual things as oak-trees, 
so we know that there are such individual things as states. 
And let us trace the natural history of states from their first 
appearance on the planet. 

And first, as to their origin. The germ of the State must 
of course be looked for and found in that phase of social 
development known as complete savagery; and I would 
venture to say that the very first state which ever existed was 
a human family consisting of a mother and her offspring. 
With all deference to sociologists, the family is a state and the 
earliest form of state. By " state " I mean not a mere aggrega- 
tion of men, but a growth, a social organism. The laws which 
govern the structure of the earliest form of state must be pre- 
social and therefore biological. These are the laws which 
underlie all political laws, and from which all political laws 
take their origin. It may safely be said that all the laws, the 
complicated laws of civilised nations, conflicting as they seem 
to us at the present day, are the lineal descendants of filial 
obedience and parental affection. 

And next, as to the growth of states. The family, as such, 
doubtless existed for a very long period without any tendency 
towards coalescence, but in course of time we find these 
families drawn together in little groups and loosely compounded 
under a single head. Whether this aggregation was originally 
due to conscious combination for purposes of mutual defence 
and other advantages, or whether it was simply a clannish ex- 



I THE STATE: ITS GROWTH AND EVOLUTION 3 

tension of the family following upon paternal recognition of 
offspring, and the consequent continuation of the family life 
during the lifetime of the head of the family, is a question for 
which there is neither the time nor the neecj in this place. 
All that it behoves us to note here is that in process of time 
we find the family consisting, not as among the lower animals 
of the mother and her offspring alone, but of the father together 
with his wives and all their children, many of whom are them- 
selves fathers of families. In addition to these members of the 
family there were others who for various reasons were admitted 
into it. Here again, interesting as the subject is, I must come 
to a halt and content myself with referring those who wish to 
look deeper into this question of the structure of the early 
patriarchal system to the learned and fascinating works of the 
late Sir Henry Maine. Later still, we find larger families whose 
original head is no longer living, though there is no doubt that 
the sub-families composing it are apparently and professedly 
connected by blood. Whether the paterfamilias was as a rule 
the head of the senior family, or, as appears to have certainly 
been the case in some places, the youngest son of the deceased 
patriarch, or whether it was some other person elected or 
nominated or otherwise fixed upon, does not concern us here. 
The compound family existed, and we may call it a Gens or a 
Curia, or by any other name for which there is any warrant. 
Whoever the paterfamilias might be, there is something 
artificial in obedience to a brother as compared with filial 
obedience, which goes far to show that the compounding and 
continued adhesion of these houses was a conscious and 
deliberate act of which the motive was the advantage (of one 
sort or another) derived from co-operation. 

Finally, these families and houses are found aggregated 
into what is called a tribe. And still later, as we sail down 
the stream of history we see these tribes themselves beginning 
to confederate. The interests which the tribes had in common, 
though not so deep-rooted or important as those which were 
peculiar to the members of the several tribes, were nevertheless 
an ever-increasing quantity. Probably the earliest trustworthy 
records of intertribal action are the historical references to 
the Greek Amphictyonic Councils. These Amphictyones were 



4 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

councils of the tribes and not of the states. The tribes, no 
matter how great or how small their individual importance, 
had all an equal vote. ISTot even Athens or Sparta counted for 
more than one. And we see the same process going on in 
early Eoman history. Whether the Comitia Curiata was origin- 
ally anything more than a periodic gathering of the elders 
under the old paternal roof {curia), or whether it was an 
expressly invented institution for the management of tribal 
affairs, cannot be positively stated (I incline to the former 
view), but there can be no doubt from the name and from the 
ceremonies associated with the institution that it dates back 
from a period when the "Kurios" himself ruled the Gens, 
and likely enough under that designation. Curiously enough, 
the Amphictyones were concerned not only with the foreign 
affairs of tribes federated for offensive or defensive alliance, 
but also with the worship of the deceased common ancestor. 
As time wore on, these somewhat loose federations became 
more and more welded into a compact whole or nation. And 
this is the highest social aggregate with which w^e are as yet 
fully acquainted. Into the actual causes of these successive 
compoundings and recompoundings we have no time to inquire 
here. They are to be found set forth in Mr. H. Spencer's 
Principles of Sociology. 

Pari passu with this compounding and recompounding of 
social groups a transformation necessarily takes place in judicial 
procedure. The despotism of the paterfamilias continues to 
obtain recognition inside the family, whereas transactions 
between members of different families or between families inter 
se are regulated in accordance with the laws of the Gens. 
Similarly, when the Houses become federated, a higher system 
of law governs the dealings between them. Some of the 
differences in procedure survive to a very late period in history, 
and prove a mystery and a stumbling-block to jurists and 
historians. For example, the Komans recognised a distinction 
between res mancipi and 7'es nee mancipi, a distinction based 
solely on the mode of transfer required by law. The line 
of cleavage was in no wise coincident with the line of cleavage 
between our real and personal property. Slaves, oxen, horses, 
and certain other chattels, fall into the category of res mancipi, 



T THE STATE: ITS GROWTH AND EVOLUTION 5 

together with land and houses. May not ploughs be added 
to the list ? Jurists have sought in vain to discover some- 
thing common and peculiar to the members of this class, the 
true explanation being that whereas res nee mancijpi were 
transferred according to the rules of the smaller group, res 
mancipi, on the other hand, were transferred by means of the 
process required by the law of the compound group. And for 
this reason : individual members of a family were in the habit 
of exchanging, bartering, and selling such things as spears, 
bows, shields, and the like, but not land and herds, which 
were held in common by the family, or by the head of the 
family, for the common good. Hence, when houses, acres, and 
flocks came to be the subject of dealings between family and 
family, it was necessary that the dealings should satisfy the 
requirements of the wider jurisprudence. Nor is it difficult 
to see that a more solemn and involved ceremonial would tend 
to develop itself in transfers from one family to another. 
Simple delivery in the presence of the patriarch or other respon- 
sible witnesses would be sufficient evidence as to the owner- 
ship of a shield or spear amongst members of the same family. 
The transaction would be sufficiently notorious. The thing 
would change hands, and words would be used indicative of the 
animus of the parties. But in the case of interfamily transac- 
tions much more would be needed. !N"ot only are the things 
in which families would deal unfit for delivery from hand to 
hand (as, for example, a flock of sheep or a range of pasture), 
but, furthermore, the representative of the State (of the group- 
force) is not present embodied in a single person ready to take 
note of the transaction. It is necessary either to convene 
those who in assembly represent the will of the federated 
families, or to perform such ceremonies as can leave no room 
for doubt as to the fact and the nature of the transaction. In 
Eome these ceremonies took the form of mancipation. We 
ourselves can recall the beatings of boundaries and the thrash- 
ing of younger children, and sometimes of the parson, which 
took place at the chief landmarks. 

Similarly, when tribes had already become welded into fairly 
homogeneous states, and were on the point of still further 
federating into larger nations, we find a new conflict of jurisdic- 



6 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

tions and of legal systems. Probably a like explanation may 
be given of the Eoman division of law into " Jus personamm " 
and " Jus rerum," the former being the law of the smaller and 
earlier group, and the latter the law of the compound aggregate. 
It is unnecessary here to go into the history of the praetorian 
edict. It is sufficient to note that at the time of the remark- 
able integration known as the growth of the Eoman Empire, 
the civil law was found unsuitable and inapplicable to the 
dealings between Eoman citizens and members of surrounding 
states. Hence the " Jus Gentium " or law of the new federa- 
tion, as opposed to the law of the chief component state. 
Whether this new jurisprudence came into existence through a 
process of extracting that which was common to the races and 
peoples making up the new aggregate ; or whether it was based 
(as some alleged) on the law of nature, i.e. abstract justice as it 
presented itself to the conscience of successive prsetors; or 
whether it grew up in some other way, matters not here ; 
what is needful to be noted is this, that on the recompounding 
of the states, each with its own body of law, a new and more 
widely based legal system arose, which conflicted with and 
eventually tended to absorb the legal systems of the component 
states. The same process is at work amongst us at the present 
day. Nations and wide empires are themselves beginning 
loosely to aggregate and to become more or less federated. 
The legal systems of the several states are inapplicable to the 
dealings between members of such several states ; and the out- 
come of the striving after order and amicable arrangement is 
what is known as international private law. If any body of 
rules on the face of the earth presents the appearance of being 
based on equity pure and simple, surely it is this body of rules 
recognised by civilised nations as governing the dealings of 
members of different countries one with another. The prin- 
ciples underlying these laws will doubtless tend in time to 
swallow up the principles upon which are based the laws 
peculiar to the separate nations. Thus international law may 
be regarded as a foreshadowing of — 

" The Parliament of man, the Federation of the world, 
When the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, 
And the kindly earth shall slumher, lapt in miiversal law." 



I THE STATE: ITS GROWTH AND EVOLUTION 7 

Thus the international private law of to-day bears the same 
relation to English or French law as the " Jus Gentium " of old 
bore to the Eoman civil law or the Corpora Juris of Greek 
and African states ; the same relation again which the " Jus 
Gentilitium " bore to the patriarchal law which preceded it. 

History presents a picture of ever -increasing political 
integration. First, the only political unit is the group consist- 
ing of a mother and her offspring ; then on the recognition of 
paternity we enter upon the patriarchal stage, in which the 
unit consists of the descendants of a living male together with 
his wives and slaves ; the whole despotically governed by him- 
self. !N"ext we have clans or houses consisting of federated 
families descended from a common deceased ancestor, having a 
common name and worship and held together by common 
interests which tend to wax stronger and stronger. These 
genUs again tend to be recompounded in one or more degrees 
till we have the tribe and eventually the nation. Finally, 
nations are themselves showing signs of coalescence. At first 
the bonds which hold together the new federation are extremely 
slight and frail; but they tend to strengthen until the 
individuality of the component groups is almost, if not alto- 
gether, merged and lost. And concurrently with the political 
integration there necessarily goes a juridical integration. 

Frequently the new federation has proved itself unstable 
and premature, and has rapidly or gradually disintegrated. 
Nature places a limit on the process. We have seen the 
Macedonian Empire no sooner built up than falling to pieces 
again. So too the Eoman Empire, after some centuries of a 
cumbrous and elephantine existence, broke up into fragments 
which proved to have more vitality than the great whole from 
which they were detached. Clearly there is a limit to the 
size of a state ruled by a single government. Now what is 
the law of the limit of political integration ? In biology the 
limit of mass of any living organism depends on the power of 
co-ordination ; that is to say, any part of the body being affected 
the whole must respond ; otherwise it is not an organic whole, 
but a mere aggregate. The same holds good of social organisms. 
The size of such organism depends on its power of internal co- 
ordination. But as time wears on, the possibilities of Integra- 



8 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

tion are increased. We have better means of commnnication 
both in the way of locomotion and signalling. We have 
increased general knowledge, and more widely distributed 
information. And finally, we have the coming together of large 
masses of the population in towns. Hence, there has resulted 
a constant tendency towards increasing integration. Men can 
work together in larger numbers century by century. At the 
same time it behoves us to inquire whether the aggregations 
we see around us are themselves stable, or whether they are 
too large for equilibrium. 

Since the break-up of the Eoman Empire there has been a 
constantly increasing tendency towards the welding together of 
tribes and small states into larger wholes. Take the history 
of these Islands. About a thousand years ago this England of 
ours was divided into no less than seven (probably we may say 
eight) separate kingdoms. Ireland was divided into at least 
five kingdoms, and Scotland consisted of a larger number of 
independent states. Well, about the year 829, the states of 
the Heptarchy were rolled into one, to which was given by 
King Egbert the name of England. Two or three centuries 
later Wales was merged in the whole. Shortly after that 
Ireland was conquered, hardly merged perhaps, but conquered 
and annexed. Then in 1603 England and Scotland were 
united under one political head, and a century later, in 1707, 
their Parliaments became one. In the year 1801 the Act of 
Union brought the Irish representatives to Westminster, and so 
apparently consolidated and completed the political integration 
of the British Isles. So that here there has been a continuous 
tendency on the part of the smaller states to federate and 
finally to become welded into an organic whole. A similar 
process has been going on all over Europe. 

In no preceding ages have the possibilities of integration 
been more enormously increased than in the present century. 
The wonderful applications of steam and of electricity to the 
satisfaction of man's wants, the immense strides made in the 
speculative sciences, and last, but not least, the bringing within 
reach of all classes of the people of the rich treasures of use- 
ful knowledge which were formerly the monopoly of the few ; 
these and other causes have operated to stimulate political 



I THE STATE: ITS GROWTH AND EVOLUTION 9 

integration to an extent hitherto unattainable, not in this 
country only, but all over the civilised world. In our own 
day we have seen the unification of Italy ; the unification of 
Germany ; the gradual absorption of small states by larger 
states. Denmark is disappearing; Holland and Belgium have 
not many years of independent existence left to them. We 
have witnessed the most stupendous war this planet has yet 
seen, waged in America for the same great principle. In fine, 
the history of this century is the history of political integration. 
It is true that alongside of flourishing and growing social 
organisms we have others in a state of decay and dissolution ; 
but even here, as in Turkey, signs are not wanting that the 
process of re-integration on a new basis is following close on 
the snapping of the old bonds. When, therefore, there is any 
question as to the wieldiness of an empire, the presumption at 
the present day is clearly in favour of a policy of integration 
rather than disruption, of increased rather than diminished 
mass. Above all, the British Empire, which before the develop- 
ment of the means of co-ordination above referred to supported 
an unprecedented mass, cannot now be suspected of inability 
to maintain its equilibrium without strong evidence to the 
contrary. A series of maps of Europe for the first year of each 
half century since the time of Justinian would well illustrate 
this tendency, and would at the same time demonstrate the folly 
and ignorance of those statesmen of all ages whose object was 
the maintenance of what they called " the balance of power." 
This view of foreign affairs is conservative in the worst sense 
of the word, and it is not yet quite extinct. 

Among other means of co-ordination must be counted im- 
proved systems of political organisation. With the sifting and 
reduction of governmental duties, a corresponding adaptation 
of governmental organs has been effected. Much has been 
done in the way of division of labour, and every year the State 
learns a new lesson from the processes of individual enterprise. 
From a single despot or a chamber of notables, the ruling body 
has developed into a gigantic framework of departments, inter- 
dependent and actuated from a common centre. 

In spite of the immense aids to empire - making, the 
enormous growth of " Greater Britain " within the last two 



10 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

centuries has pnt a considerable strain on the cohesive forces 
of Anglo-Saxondom. The most disastrous effect of this strain 
was the detachment of the American branch a hundred years 
ago. Nor until within the last few years (one might almost 
say months) has there been any very visible retendency towards 
imperial integration. The statesmen of England seem for two 
generations to have been smitten with the insular craze ; 
though we should be careful not to express in psychological 
terms what is really a natural sociological accompaniment of 
rapidly-augmenting political mass. The agitation here and in 
the Colonies in favour of some kind of closer union between 
the mother country and her offspring is one of the healthiest 
signs of the times, and upon its eventual success or failure 
depends the future of the English social system. 

The problem before us (though it is a problem which will 
eventually appear to solve itself without the assistance of 
individual cobblers) is the discovery and adoption of some 
increasing bond of union between England and her off-shoots 
and dependencies, such as shall admit of central action with- 
out weakening local liberty. And the solution is Integration 
with Decentralisation, — though this is, of course, merely a 
re-stating of the problem in fewer words. Eor what is the 
precise nature of the integration and decentralisation to be 
brought about ? Is not the freedom of the parts incompatible 
with the working of the aggregate as an organic whole ? Let 
us see. No sooner had Alfred the Great finally consolidated 
the union of the kingdoms of the Heptarchy, than he at once 
set to work, and re-subdivided the whole into counties. This 
interesting illustration throws light on the essential nature of 
true political integration. Local government of some, kind is a 
necessary concomitant of political extension over a wide area, 
rather than antagonistic thereto. Integration must not be 
confounded with centralisation, nor must decentralisation be 
confounded with disruption. On the contrary, wide empire 
(or commonwealth, if Mr. Eroude prefers the term) can be 
built and maintain its stability only on local liberty, on the 
freedom of the parts in all matters not affecting the whole. 

The problem resolves itself into an inquiry as to the true 
limits of the imperial functions and the residual local functions, 



I THE STATE : ITS GROWTH AND EVOLUTION ii 

be they of large limbs or small. " Certain interests," writes 
De Tocqueville, " are common to all parts of a nation, such as 
the enactment of its general laws, and the maintenance of its 
foreign relations. Other interests are peculiar to certain parts 
of the nation, such as, for instance, the business of the several 
townships. ... A centralised administration of local affairs is 
fit only to enervate the nations in which it exists, by incess- 
antly diminishing their local spirit. It may ensure a victory 
in the hour of strife, but it gradually relaxes the sinews of 
strength." Thus by decentralisation is meant not local legis- 
lation, but local administration. So that no local enactment 
must contravene the law of the empire ; and although local 
authorities may lay down any rules they choose for the inter- 
pretation and administration of the general law, they must not 
be permitted to enact a conflicting law. And this is true of 
all local self-governing areas, from the largest colony to the 
smallest municipality. The principle upon which the functions of 
the one rest must equally apply to the functions of the other. 

Hitherto this has been the guiding principle of local 
government in England, though there are signs of a tendency 
to run off the lines. In America, on the other hand, the 
reverse process is at work. The several states have exercised 
legislative privileges at variance with the proper functions of 
the central government; but the tendency at the present time 
is strongly in the direction of the absorption by the United 
States Government of the legislative powers of the several 
states. This is a healthy symptom and likely to become more 
pronounced. 

What is the explanation of the lack of ardour shown by 
many of our colonists for some kind of Imperial Federation ? 
They are loyal enough ; and indeed the more loyal among them 
seem to reo'ard the movement with the cfreater distrust. The 

o o 

answer is simple. They have unpleasant recollections of 
Downing Street. If England has neglected her maternal 
duties in many respects, she has made up for it by increased 
fussiness and arbitrariness in others. As might have been 
predicted, those colonies which she has treated ^vith the most 
grandmotherly solicitude, like infants not fit to be trusted with 
the most ordinary duties of self-protection, have turned out the 



12 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

least self-reliant, the least prosperous, and the most clamorous 
for more help from home. It is with nations as with individ- 
uals. The more you let them alone, the better they thrive. 
In illustration of this contention I cannot do better than quote 
a paragraph from Mr. Froude's charming book Oceana. " From 
the Cape to Australia — from intrigue and faction and the 
perpetual interference of the Imperial Government, to a 
country where politics are but differences of opinion, where the 
hand of the Imperial Government is never felt, where the 
people are busy with their own affairs, and the harbours are 
crowded with ships, and the quays with loading-carts, and the 
streets with men, where every one seems occupied, and every one 
at least moderately contented — the change is great indeed. 
The climate is the same. The soil on the average is equal : 
what Australia produces Sou.th Africa produces with equal 
freedom. In Australia, too, there is a mixture of races — 
English, Germans, and Chinese. Yet in one all is life, vigour, 
and harmony ; the other lies blighted, and every effort for its 
welfare fails. What is the explanation of so vast a difference ? 
One is a natural and healthy branch from the parent oak, left 
to grow as nature prompts it, and bearing its leaves and acorns 
at its own impulse. No bands or ligaments impede the action 
of the vital force. The parent tree does not say to it, You 
shall grow in this shape, and not in that; but leaves it to 
choose its own. Thus it spreads and enlarges its girth, and 
roots itself each year more firmly in the stem from which it 
has sprung. The Cape is a branch doing its best to thrive, but 
withering from the point where it joins the trunk, as if at that 
point some poison was infecting it." This is a case of " doing 
those things which we ought not to have done." But England 
is quite as guilty of " leaving undone those things which we 
ought to have done." While she has busied herself with 
preaching and dictating to her own colonies, she has allowed 
other nations to establish themselves in dangerous proximity to 
them. Colonial remonstrance has usually been in vain. 
While our pioneering brethren across the Atlantic have acted 
upon the Monroe doctrine in ]N"orth America, we have allowed 
French and Germans quietly to appropriate "unconsidered 
trifles " in the way of harbours and islands from which at no 



I THE STATE: ITS GROWTH AND EVOLUTION 13 

distant date they must be ejected, possibly not without trouble 
and expense. It is said that we may smile at these amateur 
invasions of N'ew G-uinea and the ISTew Hebrides and Angra 
Pequ.ena, etc. etc. Curiously enough, however, all the smiling 
is done at home. The Colonies do not join in the fun. They 
have suffered too much already in the process of " surviving " 
by way of proving that they are the fittest, and they prefer in 
future to take it for granted. If instead of bullying the Dutch 
in the Cape we had long ago " proclaimed a sort of Monroe 
doctrine for South Africa and also for the islands of the 
Australasian Archipelago, we should have saved ourselves much 
complication. Again, regardless of the history of our Indian 
Empire, we have suppressed all private initiative like to that 
of the famous Company. Only recently a similar enterprise, 
on a scale the future limits of which could not be foreseen, was 
launched in Borneo, when the home government lost no time 
in throwing cold water upon it. 

Too little consideration is paid to the necessities of the 
pioneers of Anglo-Saxondom on the borders of our straggling 
empire, and too much, far too much, to the sentiments of 
ignorant if well-meaning faddists at the centre. It is easy to 
sit at home and cant about the rights of the poor Indian to 
his hunting-grounds, but the struggling settler knows that a 
thousand human beings can be supported on those lands under 
cultivation for one who can find subsistence on it as a hunter : 
and he knows also what a wild beast is the native with whom 
he has to deal. " Aborigines protection " is a hobby which 
requires a consummate ignorance of aborigines generally and a 
plentiful infusion of fiction to render it a really fascinating 
pursuit. Yet England panders to the crotcheteer. 

Thus, when the feasibihty of the common government of 
two or more nations or areas is raised, there are two distinct 
questions to face. First, is the political integration of the two 
countries desirable and practicable? Second, if so, for what 
degree of decentralisation are the two or more component parts 
ripe ? The questions are quite distinct and should be kept so 
Unfortunately there has been a marked tendency to confuse 
them. 

In the lisht of the above reflections let us consider the 



14 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

question of the government of Irelaud. We have seen that 
as regards the total separation of Great Britain and Ireland, 
the presumption is against it. But presumption is not proof. 
Those who regard political integration most favourably, as 
calculated to remove the friction due to international barriers 
and jealousies, will hardly approve the action of the Fifth 
Monarchy Men, who, a couple of centuries ago, so far believed 
in the federation of mankind as to convene a meeting in 
London to weld all the nations of the world into one empire, 
and to proclaim Jesus Christ king. Surely this was carrying 
an abstract principle to an absurd length. But without going 
so far as that, history shows that it is quite possible to exceed 
the normal limits of a wise federation. It may be doubted 
whether Austria-Hungary is a stable combination. The king- 
dom of the Netherlands clearly was not ; though many would 
have regarded it as quite as natural and politic as the union 
of ITorway and Sweden or of Great Britain and Ireland. 
Hence the policy of the latter union is not altogether out of 
court, and must be considered on its merits as a practical 
question of political expediency. Disintegration, dismember- 
ment, and disruption of the Empire are fine phrases, well 
calculated to split the ears of the groundlings ; but the 
present application of a principle how good soever in theory 
is a question for the practical statesman. 

iJ^ow, what are the grounds upon which the practical 
statesman must base his decision as to the expediency and 
opportuneness of a proposed union of two or more peoples or 
of a proposed discontinuance of any such existing union ? 
Certainly not in accordance with phrases of general import. 
To demonstrate the folly of such a course it is only necessary 
to cite a few instances in which a decision was or might have 
been required. Will any one contend that, whether wise or 
unwise, the cession of the Ionian Islands to Greece was tant- 
amount to the disruption of the British Empire ? Then again 
the Transvaal was part of this Empire. When after an 
unsuccessful war, independence was conceded to the victors, 
did that amount to dismemberment ? But to take an even 
less doubtful case. Not many years ago France nominally 
formed part of the dominions of the Kings of England ; was 



THE STATE: ITS GROWTH AND EVOLUTION 



15 



the withdrawal of such claim a tribute to the principle of 
disintegration ? Hundreds of other instances of varying 
degrees might be cited, but these suffice to show that before 
any case of separation, or admission of separation, can fairly be 
denounced as violating the principle of political integration, it 
must be clearly established that a true and natural union, as 
distinguished from an artificial or nominal union, antecedently 
existed. The actual point to be decided is whether the 
present time is opportune for tightening and strengthening the 
bonds which tend to weld the English and Irish into a homo- 
geneous people, as the English and Welsh have long since been 
welded ; or whether the circumstances are such that the bonds 
should be slackened, and an impetus given in the opposite 
direction ; that is to say, towards the divergence of the two 
peoples. 

I will venture to submit three reasons which at any time 
may be urged against the artificial union of peoples. 

1st. Two nations cannot well be welded together when 
active co-ordination is difficult ; as, for instance, when they 
are situated at a great distance apart and without rapid means 
of communication. Hence the natural disruption of the 
Spanish Empire in South America. Hence the probable 
transfer of the Dutch possessions in the East Indies either to 
England or to Germany at no very distant date. These are V 
cases in which co-ordination with respect to a given centre is 
or was difficult, if not impossible. Of course no one will 
contend that this can be put forward as a valid reason against 
governing Ireland from Westminster. If the British Govern- 
ment is capable of ruling what are called the Crown Colonies 
at distances very much greater than from London to Dublin, 
it is obvious that this particular objection cannot hold. 

2d. The second argument which may validly be urged 
against union or in favour of disunion, is that the two peoples 
in question are in different stages of social evolution. In such 
cases it is wellnigh impossible to weld the two into a single 
homogeneous state. Now this objection might fairly be urged 
againt the political union of the Anglo-Saxon people and the 
people of India. It is impossible to weld these two races into 
a homogeneous state, because they are in totally different 



1 6 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

stages of social evolution. Institutions suitable to the one 
people would ruin the other. The Hindus are somewhat back- 
ward in civilisation, but will any one pretend that apart from 
slight differences the English and the Irish are in different 
phases of social development ? Are the Irish as individuals 
vastly inferior to the English in any particular ? If so, what ? 
Without enumerating their soldiers, poets, philosophers, artists, 
and men of science, it is not necessary to go farther afield than 
to Spain of a hundred years ago to meet the vulgar contention 
that they are inferior as statesmen. In the middle of last 
century, the Spanish Ambassador to the Court of St. James 
was an Irishman, so was the Spanish Ambassador to the Court 
of Stockholm ; so was the Spanish Ambassador to the Court of 
Vienna ; the Prime Minister of Spain was himself an Irishman ; 
so too was the organiser of the Spanish Army. In fine the 
wisest and best government which Spain has ever known was 
conducted by Irishmen. Surely without going into details or 
naming names, this alone goes to show that the Irish are not 
wanting in administrative ability. Thus the English and Irish 
peoples can hardly be said to be in different stages of social 
evolution. And the second argument against their permanent 
union breaks down. 

3d. The third reason which can be urged against the 
union of races is that their claims upon the Government are 
conflicting. Let me explain. So long as it is admitted by 
both parties that it is the duty of the State to uphold the true 
religion, clearly nations of different religions cannot weU be 
ruled by the same governing body. If the State is to take 
sides in any degree in the matter of religion, it would be 
difficult indeed for the same government to rule England and 
Ireland. The Irish are of opinion that the Eoman Catholic is 
the best form of religion ; the English, for reasons known to 
some of them, maintain that the Protestant form (or one of 
them) is better. Now, if the Government is to decide between 
these two, it must appear to side with one of the disputants ; 
and the other will feel aggrieved and possibly rebellious. 
Ao'ain, to take a kindred matter, the Irish have stronof views 
on the matter of the marriao'e-tie. The Enolish are in favour 
of permitting divorce under certain conditions. If the State 



I THE STATE: ITS GROWTH AND EVOLUTION 17 

is expected to interfere in such matters, clearly the Union 
Government must offend one nation or the other. The English 
lean towards liberty ; the Irish towards coercion. The State 
must choose between them. Conversely, the English favour 
coercion and the Irish liberty in the matter of tobacco culture. 
The reason is not far to seek. The climate and soil of Ireland 
are favourable to the growth of tobacco. In England it is 
otherwise. Thus by the prohibition of the growth of tobacco 
the revenue is increased without inflicting any injury on 
English farmers. The Union Government had to choose 
between them, and it elected to suppress tobacco culture in 
the British Isles. Again, England is a manufacturing people; 
Ireland is almost wholly an agricultural people. Hence 
freedom to buy in the cheapest markets (or the dearest if 
preferred) enables England to profit by purchasing her raw 
materials at the lowest figure, whilst the like liberty, besides 
being useless to Ireland, enables foreign competitors to under- 
sell her sole produce in the home markets. Here again 
England favours liberty and Ireland coercion. If and so long 
as the State is expected by both parties alike to interfere in 
such matters at all, it is clear that the Union Government 
must favour one nation and aggrieve the other. Under such 
circumstances it is obvious that the union can be maintained 
only with difficulty and friction. It is also highly probable 
that where there is considerable disparity in the strength of 
the two nations, the Union Government will tend to lean 
toward the wishes of the stronger and the more numerously 
represented in the ruling body. 

We see that while England favours coercion in some 
matters, Ireland favours coercion in other matters ; and not 
until the policy of non-interference by the State in all matters 
is recognised as a general rule, can the two peoples hope to 
flourish together under a common Government. At present 
this is not the case. Both parties clamour for State aid here 
and State control there, while they differ as to where the State 
should interfere and where it should not. Hence the third 
argument against the union seems to be at the present time a 
most valid one. 

When Irish and English alike shall have learnt the great 



i8 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

lesson of history aright — the lesson of liberty — then, and not 
till then, will the time be thoroughly ripe for a happy union. 

Unfortunately, both parties in both countries — Liberals 
and Conservatives — are doing their utmost to inspire the 
people with blind faith in the omnipotence of the State. If 
the State is justified in transferring one-third of the property 
of one class of the citizens to another class, without com- 
pensation, it is difficult for the most highly instructed — it is 
impossible for the uninstructed — to understand why it cannot 
with consistency transfer two-thirds or even three-thirds, and 
an agitation is naturally set on foot with the very logical 
object of " freeing " the land. Why not ? Englishmen of 
both parties have admitted the duty of the State to intervene 
between landlord and tenant, and the simple, unsophisticated 
folk of both countries push the principle to its logical extreme. 
Conservatives have vied with Liberals in voting the money of 
the British taxpayer for the purpose of pauperising the Irish 
in a hundred ways, and the logical reply of the British tax- 
payer is: If you want £150,000,000 for the Irish, let those 
contribute it who live in Ireland and may benefit by the 
expenditure, but do not take it out of the pockets of the English 
shopkeeper and farmer. The Government, with the approval 
of both parties, has constructed or subsidised railways, has 
built harbours and docks, has embanked rivers and made 
canals ; it has provided the people with instruction at less 
than cost price ; it has built houses and let them at less than 
the normal rent ; it has fixed prices between buyer and seller, 
and frequently paid the difference out of public moneys. It 
has done all these things, and a thousand more, out of its own 
apparently bottomless purse, and the simple citizen cannot see 
why, with such a powerful machine, much more cannot be 
effected. Even now eminent financiers are gravely talking of 
regulating the value of silver. It has fallen, they say, too 
low. Let us enact that 16^ ounces of silver shall for ever 
be worth one ounce of gold. Hey Presto ! The thing is 
done. " And pray," asks Hodge, " why not while you are 
about it enact that the value of wheat shall again be sixty 
shillings a quarter ? It will suit us agriculturists, and perhaps 
we are as deserving on the whole as retired Anglo-Indian 



I THE STATE : ITS GROWTH AND EVOLUTION 19 

pensioners." " Let us build houses for the poor/' says Lord 
Salisbury ; " at the expense of the landowner," adds Mr. 
Chamberlain ; " and why not supply them with beef and 
bread ? " replies Mr. Hyndman. And so the ball is kept 
rolling. 

So long as the Irish pray for rain and the English pray 
for fine weather they had better supplicate different gods. 
When they are prepared to accept the weather as it comes, 
and to make the best of it, they can then worship in the same 
temple. 

It is needless to observe that this alone does not solve the 
question of separation. There are other factors. Foremost 
among them is the reasonable doubt whether the effective 
majority in the area called Ireland is actually Irish. Apart 
from the mere question of numbers there is room for doubt 
whether the British element in that country is not as powerful 
as, if not more powerful than, the Irish. But whether this is 
so or not, in these days of rapid communication and stimulated 
intercourse, silent and unseen links are daily being forged 
which tend firmly to bind the two peoples together. No 
legislation will prevent the Saxon from bringing home an Irish 
bride, and if English beauty has not quite the same fascination 
for Irishmen there is a metallic attraction which seems to 
exercise a corresponding influence. Again, consider the large 
and increasing number of professional Irishmen who have 
made England their home, and the even larger number of 
English and Scotch traders and manufacturers who have 
settled in the rising towns in the North of Ireland and else- 
where. To make aliens of all these by a stroke of the pen 
would be a national calamity for both peoples, and more 
especially for the Irish. 

Again, there is another consideration, which must nowadays 
be put forward with bated breath, and that is the predominant 
need of the superior race. Eor strategic reasons it might not 
be prudent for England to allow the western island to be 
under foreign government. If so, the argument of nations 
enters — the argument of force. In such cases it behoves the 
leaders in both countries to see that the paramount needs of 
race do not conflict with the just rights and liberties of 



20 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

individuals, no matter to what race they may belong. It must 
not be forgotten that it is the superior social organisation 
which tends to survive, and not necessarily that of the superior 
individual type of man. The latter may be absorbed and 
even eventually predominate, but it will be under the system 
of the better organised society. 

Disruption and dismemberment are phrases, but if it can 
be shown that the repeal of the Union would be a step in the 
direction of breaking up what tends to become a natural 
integration, whether it is so now or not, then the cry stands 
condemned by history and by science. But why beat the air ? 
English and Irish statesmen of all parties are now professedly 
unanimous in declaring that no such thing as separation is 
contemplated or even desired. The only question between 
them is as to the best form of local government, and here 
again we find complete unanimity in the view that increased 
decentralisation must be effected. In order to form a correct 
estimate of the direction which decentralisation should take in 
this particular instance it is necessary to consider the general 
question. 

When wide areas come under a single government, certain 
powers must be delegated to local subordinate bodies, or the 
work cannot possibly be performed at all. The question for 
us to determine is, what functions should be delegated ? and 
to whom should they be delegated ? In scientific phraseology, 
what are the proper structures and functions of local governing 
bodies ? How are the areas to be defined ? How are the 
individuals within those areas to be represented ? To what 
extent, if any, should they be permitted to act independently 
and arbitrarily. 

It is customary for local government reformers to begin 
with the areas, and having determined these, and arranged a 
representative system, to fit out the authorities so constituted 
with suitable duties. This is not the method which science 
would prescribe. Eather let us first discover the matters which, 
while they must be accomplished somehow, cannot well fall 
within the province of the Imperial Government on the one 
hand, nor command the resources of private enterprise on the 
other. This can best be done, not by mapping out in theory 



I THE STATE : ITS GROWTH AND EVOLUTION 21 

all the whole duty of society, and then distributing it on some 
cb jpriori plan, but by ascertaining what duties are actually 
at the present day undertaken by the central authority in this 
and other countries, and what by the local authorities. By 
comparing these with the functions of local governments in the 
past we obtain a fair view of the field which history and 
experience have marked out as the proper sphere of local 
governmental action. We find that many of such duties and 
whole classes of them have long since passed out of the domain 
of local government. Some of them have been taken over by 
the State, others have become obsolete, while others again have 
been appropriated by private adventure. On the other hand, 
to compensate local authorities for the loss of these functions, 
new ones have been freely conferred upon them in this country. 
If the counties are no longer the custodians of the prisons, 
they are compensated for the lost privilege by being entrusted 
with the guardianship of the health of the cattle of the district. 
The county is likewise empowered to keep an eye on billiard 
players, ballet dancers, alcohol drinkers, and lunatics. It is 
entrusted with the carrying out of the Weights and Measures 
Act and of the Adulteration Acts. It supervises knackers' 
yards, and grants conditional licenses to game dealers, to 
pawnbrokers, to dynamite sellers, and some other traders. 
The county also provides a section of the police, for which it 
is in part responsible. It is liable for the maintenance of 
certain roads and of certain bridges, and of shire halls and 
other semi-public buildings. 

Besides the county we have in England several other areas 
of local government of one sort and another. There is the 
Parish ; there is the Union ; there is the Municipal Borough ; 
and there is the Local Government district, besides a number 
of areas mapped out in accordance with special objects, such 
as Highway Districts, Improvement Act Districts, etc. The 
functions of these authorities are very various. They supple- 
ment the work of the counties in providing police, in main- 
taining roads and bridges and lunatic asylums ; they are 
concerned with the drainage of land and the prevention of 
floods. They comprise sanitation, education, registration, vac- 
cination ; the provision of cemeteries, libraries, museums, wash- 



22 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

houses, baths, playgrounds, etc. ; the supply of gas, water, 
electricity, and certain conveyances ; all these duties in addition 
to the great work of poor relief. Over and above these matters 
of more or less universal interest, there are special concerns 
proper to certain localities, such as the duties of fishery boards 
and the maintenance of docks, piers, harbours, and embank- 
ments. 

This survey is, of course, very superficial and incomplete, 
but it is sufficient for the purpose of showing that the duties 
of local authorities do not seem of themselves to carve out 
areas in common ; that is to say, there is no particular reason 
why the area requiring a separate authority to see to cattle 
disease should be the same area for which a highway board is 
. required or separate provision for lunatics. The parish might 
be a suitable area for the registration of births and deaths, and 
at the same time most unsuitable for the construction of tram- 
ways. For the maintenance of main roads one would almost 
suppose the best area would be coextensive with the island. 
So the Eomans thought. While for the purposes of gas or 
water supply the municipal borough would seem the most 
suitable. Police, prisons, paupers, and lunatics, again, appear 
to have no particular relation to any definite locality. The 
dispensation of justice is an imperial concern. The pauper 
has no claim on any locality ; poor relief is not a forced tribute 
of pity from neighbours, but a sop to revolution, a bribe to 
those who would otherwise have the choice only between 
starvation and crime. Hence it is not a provincial concern. 
So the lunatic, like the criminal, is dangerous to the whole 
community, and like the criminal must be looked after for the 
general good. 

Other areas, like the old acre, seem to be determined by 
the amount of work of a given kind that a busy man can get 
through in a given time. Such are the areas most suitable 
for registration, vaccination, and inspection. Others again are 
determined by nature, such as fishery boards and harbour 
authorities. The river basin would likewise seem to demarcate 
the area of drainage boards. For the purpose of churches, 
schools, libraries, museums, baths, wash-houses, parks, ceme- 
teries, etc. etc., the area would naturally adjust itself to the 



I THE STATE : ITS GROWTH AND EVOLUTION 23 

amount of time required to get to them with convenience. 
People cannot be expected to walk four miles to a public 
wash-house, or ten miles to a park. Half a mile seems to 
be about the limit of the radius from the polling-booth beyond 
which the patriotism of the parliamentary voter is put to a 
considerable strain. Country churches and schools seem to 
draw for a radius of about two miles. But all such points 
can be ascertained only by that experience in each particular 
case which private enterprise alone seems able to supply. 

One thing seems certain. The arbitrary creation of an 
area for no better reason than because it has a name, and the 
endowing of the authorities of such an area with duties, is 
opposed to all the teachings of nature and of science, and can 
lead to no better result than mischief and confusion. Eather 
than adopt such a system, let there be as many areas as there 
are functions ; let them overlap over and over again. Why 
not ? A gas company feels no inconvenience from the fact 
that its area of supply overlaps that of the neighbouring water 
company. Neither has a railway company ever been known 
to complain that the area to which its powers apply is not so 
coextensive with the county or counties in which it lies. 
What grounds are there for any such complaint ? And yet 
when these and the like functions are undertaken, not by 
private individuals and companies, but by local authorities, 
there arises an outcry that the areas of exploitation should be 
identical. Why those persons whose common educational 
needs are peculiar to their district should also necessarily 
require peculiar railway accommodation, is a puzzle to all who 
are unacquainted with local authorities in general, and the 
raw material from which they are manufactured. If highway 
boards were composed of men peculiarly conversant with roads 
and road management, it is not likely they would claim to 
supply the inhabitants of the highway district with milk or 
with gas ; but being, as they are, merely unqualified persons 
recruited from the ranks of the busybodies, and possessed of 
unbounded confidence in their own administrative abilities, 
they are accustomed to find themselves sitting together, not 
only on the highway board, but likewise on the school board, 
the board of guardians, and, perchance, round some other table 



24 individualism: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

of fussy officialism. Now why, they ask one another, cannot 
we transact all the public business in one place and at one 
time as they do in Parliament ? Why, asks Smith, am I 
entrusted with the management of the affairs of the vestry, if 
I am not fit for a seat on the school board ? It never occurs 
to him that he may have considerable acquaintance with the 
people of the parish and their requirements as to wash-houses 
and gas-lamps without possessing even the rudiments of a 
sound education, or any knowledge of educational needs. In 
fine, so far from being an evil, the overlapping of areas is 
natural, and, as will be seen, an unmixed good. 

The localisation of government must always be in response 
to a distinctly seen demand. The reason for it must be 
apparent and easily explained. The area must be, as it were, 
self-determined, and not artificially carved out. Thus the Isle 
of Man should not form part of the same highway district as 
Cumberland or Wigtownshire. Why not ? Because there is 
a sea voyage of some hours between them, and because the 
two regions have no roads in common. For like reasons a 
municipal borough is a natural self-defined area of self-govern- 
ment (so far as local administration can be called self-govern- 
ment) ; and the difficulty consists not so much in discovering 
that such a town, for instance, as Leeds, has peculiar interests 
which are not shared by Wakefield or Bradford, as in deter- 
mining where the actual limits of Leeds should be drawn ; 
where, that is to say, the suburban population seem to have 
more in common with the surrounding country than, by reason 
of their distance from the centre, they have with the town. 
That because a region is called l^ottinghamshire it should 
have a little Parliament of its own to which should be entrusted 
all conceivable local duties is the height of absurdity. If a 
county happened to be completely surrounded by a chain of 
mountains, or other barrier which cut it off from the adjacent 
country, there might be some reason in regarding it as for 
some purposes a suitable area for local government ; but 
surely the accidental fact of its having been separated from 
the adjoining districts by an artificial line for some forgotten 
reason by a Saxon King is no ground at all. Voluntary 
combination should in all cases be the precursor of political 



I THE STATE : ITS GROWTH AND EVOLUTION 25 

segregation. Co-operation is coextensive with common needs. 
People do not combine aimlessly, or because they live in the 
same wapentake. Indeed, there would be no reason for 
granting local government at all, but for the trouble and 
difficulty of interpreting and administering the general law on 
every occasion from a distant centre. Private enterprise can, 
and will, affect all that is good and lawful for any local area 
which is ripe for it. 

There is only one thing which private enterprise cannot 
do, or rather which it is prohibited from doing, and that is the 
coercion of the minority — of the unwilling — of those who, 
while they will not contribute towards the common end, yet 
reap part of the advantage of it at the expense of the majority. 
Clearly, if nearly all the inhabitants of a street determined to 
light that street with gas, those who refused to contribute 
would, nevertheless, have the benefit of a well -lit street. 
Similarly with paving, draining, and many other things. Left 
to themselves, the majority in the locality would say to these 
non-unionists, " You are unwilling to live among us on terms 
of mutual assistance, and the common sharing of burdens and 
advantages ; you had better go." And go they would. But 
this is not tolerated by the larger majority outside. The 
minority in the locality is in the majority in the country in 
this matter of freedom of combination. Local anarchy would 
solve the problem. Instead of which a certain amount of 
State socialism takes its place. Compulsory co-operation is 
sanctioned by the State under certain conditions which are 
expressed in general terms. The application of these laws to 
the numerous special cases which arise in all parts of the 
country requires either a very large and unwieldy central 
machinery or some kind of local administration. And herein 
lies the folly of advocating local legislation. If local authorities 
are to be permitted to legislate independently, it is clear we 
are brought back to the original position of local anarchy. If 
a majority can pass a law of a general nature, it can equally 
well pass a law of a special nature, and order at once the 
unwilling minority to quit. Indeed, it needs but a little 
thought to perceive clearly that local legislation is absurd. 
The interpretation of State law may be left in the first instance 



26 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

to local authorities ; in fact, private enterprise already claims 
that right ; as, for instance, when a man removes a hurdle from 
across a public footpath with his own hands. But if the 
other party has no right of appeal, then we have again the 
original situation, for the power of irresponsible interpretation 
is virtually the power of independent legislation. Hence, it 
appears, all so-called local legislation should be, in reality, 
central legislation, administered either by State constituted 
local authorities or by an association of private individuals. 
If the law is exceeded, the local authorities have acted ultra 
vires, and their action is invalidated. If the law is conformed 
with, the private association has vindicated the law, and its 
action will stand. 

Thus the highest form of local government is one of 
complete and unqualified private enterprise. If, for example, 
the State considers that the laying down of private rails on the 
public highway in the shape of tramways is really a public 
good, it is justified in passing a general enactment to that effect, 
subject to certain specified conditions, among which may be 
the tacit consent of a given proportion of the inhabitants (or 
certain of them) of the districts through which the line passes. 
The tramway company under such a State law would then pro- 
ceed to lay down its lines without necessarily asking the leave 
of any one, and if no one could raise a valid objection, or, being 
able, had not the energy or public spirit to do it, the company 
would proceed with its business, to the great advantage of some 
and the annoyance of others. If the people of a district have 
not the combining instinct and the public spirit to associate 
themselves together for common ends, the more they are left to 
suffer for the defect and to develop the instinct the better for 
themselves and the whole race. The thrusting of so-called self- 
government upon people who do not claim it and exercise it 
without external pressure is like sending Joachim to play to 
the proverbial gentleman who cannot distinguish between " God 
save the Queen" and "The Old Hundredth." It is not a 
higher quality of article that he requires, but the faculty to 
appreciate what he has at his door. The local authority, 
whether State recognised or self-appointed, and the individual 
with whom it is at issue, must be regarded as, in all respects, 



I THE STATE : ITS GROWTH AND EVOLUTION 27 

upon an equal footing. Suppose Smith declines to pay the 
demand made upon him by the municipality in respect of some 
new water-works within whose circumscribed district he resides, 
but from which he derives no benefit. The Court of Justice 
(whether of first instance or of appeal) must decide whether 
the conditions and circumstances are such as are declared by 
implication in the Act of Parliament relating to the subject to 
require the contribution of Smith. Unless such general enact- 
ment is beyond question, no arguments from local convenience 
can override Smith's right to choose his own investments. If 
local laws can of themselves operate to the detriment of any 
individual in the district, then clearly they conflict with the 
law of the land which guarantees that individual the full 
enjoyment of all liberties which are not therein expressly 
restricted. It is hardly necessary to add that I do not put 
forward this doctrine of the Individualisation of Local Govern- 
ment as a system to be adopted all at once ; but merely as an 
ideal to be kept in view and gradually approached. In its 
entirety it is rather the system of the remote than of the near 
future. It is probable that even England is hardly ripe for it 
yet. As M. Leon Say has recently pointed out, " the proper 
limit of State action cannot be laid down in the same way as 
a boundary line on a map ; it is a boundary which alters in 
accordance with the times, and the political, economic, and moral 
condition of the people." '' 

To apply some of these conclusions to practical questions 
of the day : Local areas should be left to the natural delimita- 
tion of voluntary combinations. And areas should overlap as 
naturally as the areas of ordinary trade distribution. Above 
all, the areas should not be carved out first and the functions 
allotted after. Such a course is the very reverse of scientific. 
The powers of local authorities should, m no respect, exceed those 
of ordinary voluntary associations. Consequently, local bye- 
laws cannot conflict with the law of the land. For the right 
of the majority in a locality is not based on the superior force 
of the majority in that locality, but on the superior force of the 
effective majority in the country of which it is a part, which 
force is delegated (for reasons which seem good to such effective 
majority) to the numerical majority or other portion of the 



28 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

inhabitants of the said district. This is an important fact not 
to be forgotten. Thus the local majority has no more right to 
act on its own initiative than the local minority ; or than the 
policeman who carries out the will of the State ; or than the 
private individual who interferes in the interest of law and 
justice in a row at a fair. They must all take the responsibility 
of their actions. It may be said, and truly, that if the State in 
its wisdom thinks fit to enact that the will of the majority in a 
given locality shall in all matters prevail, then the will of the 
majority in that locality is as supreme and as well based on 
ultimate force as the will of the effective majority in the country 
itself; being, in fact, based on the will of that majority. This 
is so. And the same is also true of any less general, though 
equally indefinite, delegation of State power to a local majority. 
Thus the indefinite power to do what it chooses in respect of 
such or such matters ; as, for instance, all matters relating to 
the trade in alcoholic liquors ; or to the hours of closing in 
retail shops ; or to the regulation of places of public amuse- 
ment ; puts the local majority in respect of these matters in 
the same position that it would occupy if the locality were an 
independent one. The minority forfeit the liberty which 
belongs to them by virtue of being members of the larger com- 
munity. The whole process is, to whatever extent it is carried, 
one of political disintegration. 

And what is the remedy for all this ? Must we revert to 
a system of centralisation ? Not at all. Quite the reverse. 
Decentralise down to the unit itself, the individual. Does 
Smith find the house adjoining his own a source of annoyance 
to him ? Is there noise and singing there all night ? Is it the 
centre of attraction for disreputable persons whose presence is 
dangerous to him ? Let him prove the nuisance and suppress 
it, if he can. If not, let him betake himself elsewhere. If 
several persons in one street find a public-house in that street or 
near to it a continual source of drunkenness and of temptation 
to their servants, or otherwise obnoxious to them, let them prove 
the nuisance and suppress the house. If I keep a pig in my 
back garden and nobody feels injured by it, why should I alter 
my arrangements ? But if my neighbours or any of them find 
the smell objectionable, or fear the sanitary consequences, let 



I THE STATE : ITS GROWTH AND EVOLUTION 29 

them or any of them prove the nuisance and suppress my pig- 
stye. But it is asked, how is the nuisance to be proved ? It 
is not enough in a Court of Justice to show that the neigh- 
hours or some of them, or even all of them, object to the thing 
complained of. That does not constitute it a nuisance. Your 
house may be painted in the worst possible taste, utterly hate- 
ful to the eyes of your neighbours, but they are powerless to 
compel you to alter it. The church bell next door may go near 
to distracting me, but I have no remedy by merely showing that I 
am subjected to great annoyance. But if the annoyance is 
caused not by a church bell but by my next door neighbour's 
organ, I may get the nuisance abated. I^ow unless the opinion 
of the majority of the locality is to be taken, how is 
the question of nuisance to be settled by the courts ? 

In reply to this the question may be asked, and how is it 
to be settled when the opinion of the majority is taken ? The 
majority of whom ? According as you carve out your localities 
into large or small areas, so you strengthen or render precarious 
the rights and liberties of individual citizens. Suppose a locality 
should decide to eject all persons professing religious opinions 
at variance with those held by the majority, would the State 
be justified in deserting the minority and leaving them to the 
tender mercies of a clique who might themselves be in a 
decided minority in the country, though locally in a majority ? 
Suppose a majority of the inhabitants of Cork decided to pro- 
hibit the opening of a retail shop in that town by an English- 
man, would the State be justified in permitting such an act of 
tyranny ? Similarly, if the people of some obscure town should 
pronounce in favour of closing all houses for the sale of tobacco 
or cheese or alcoholic liquors, with or without compensation 
to the traders affected, could this be tolerated ? With injustice 
and tyranny on the one side, and the effective force on the other, 
what conceivable reason can be adduced for putting up with 
the injustice ? Of course if the effective majority in the 
country themselves choose to act unjustly, tyrannically, and 
foolishly, there is no power on earth to stop it. We have 
reached the ultimate source of power and it is poisoned. So 
much the worse. But when there is an appeal to a higher 
power, the surrender of such power into the hands of local 



30 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

majorities is nothing less than political suicide ; it is voluntary 
political disintegration. 

It is quite true that such is the nebulous state of the law- 
regarding nuisances that almost any action brought by an 
individual for the suppression of anything objectionable to him 
is something like dipping his hand in the lucky-bag. But the 
remedy for this is a better induction from the numerous 
decisions in nuisance cases with a view to forming the nucleus 
of a code, a process which is in course of accomplishment, and 
which would be more rapidly effected but for disturbing causes. 
The very principles upon which the English law relating to 
nuisance is based are continually being called in question by 
the highest authorities ; and probably the chief reason for the 
lack of attention given to the subject is the prevalent belief 
that the new legislation concerning local government will 
settle this and many other difficult problems. It will do 
nothing of the kind. Both parties at the present time seem 
pretty well agreed to take a step in the direction of the 
Commune ; but it will only throw the difficulty a step farther 
back. 

There can be no doubt that the behef in local legislation 
as distinguished from local administration is at the bottom of 
the present wave of feeling in favour of such moves as a 
separate parliament for Ireland, a secretary for Scotland, the 
disestablishment of the Church in Wales and the Kke. If the 
State Church is an advantage, why should the majority in 
Wales (a minority in the whole country) seek or be 
allowed to injure the Welsh minority ? If, on the other 
hand, the State Church in any way injures either by taxation 
or unfair privileges and monopolies those who are not members 
of it, then the majority in Wales ought to be ashamed to 
desert their fellow-sufferers in England by getting rid of the 
evil where it is most felt and thereby weakening the feeling 
against it. Again, far too much respect has been paid to 
sentiment in the matter of certain fiscal and other privileges 
in the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. Such anomalies 
should be swept away. Above all, the absurd custom of 
passing one act of Parliament for England, another for England 
and Ireland, and a third for Scotland is quite out of date. A 



I THE STATE : ITS GROWTH AND EVOLUTION 31 

vigorous effort should be made not to differentiate the laws of 
the three kingdoms or provinces, but to assimilate them. 

We have but to look abroad to see how different has been 
the behaviour of foreign states. While we have been sleepily 
creating new difficulties for future statesmen and lawyers to 
remove, French and Prussian and Italian statesmen and 
lawyers have been straining the resources of strong govern- 
ments to assimilate the laws of the different provinces under 
their sway, with a view to removing all possible sources of 
dispute and envy, and to " maintaining and invigorating the 
principle of national unity." ^ The object of the continental 
codes has been less the unification of the various legal systems 
obtaining in different parts of the country than the amalgama- 
tion of the political elements. " In the case of the Prussian Code," 
writes Professor Amos, " it is less easy than in the case of the 
French Code to separate the object of promoting political unity 
from that of promoting legal unity among the heterogeneous 
elements of a newly -consolidated state, though the twofold 
object is quite as conspicuous here as it was in the French case." 
" The Italian Civil Code," writes the same author, " is a further 
specimen of the close connection existing in all the continental 
codes between consolidation of the laws on the one hand, and 
the necessity of riveting or promoting political and legal unity 
on the other. This code is in fact a composite edition of 
the various codes prevalent in different parts of the whole 
newly-constituted Italian territories."^ 

This laxity on the part of Englishmen to accomplish what 
other nations in face of immeasurably greater obstacles have 
either effected or come near to effecting may perhaps be attri- 
buted to the comparative stability of England's internal economy, 
but the true explanation is the absorption of the national 
energy in the direction of increasing mass, at the expense- of co- 
ordination, just as in the case of a growing child N'ature applies 
herself with such zeal to growth as to neglect form and propor- 
tion. When the full size has been approximately attained, then 
the awkward, gawky movements are less and less observable, 
and the limbs respond more smoothly, deftly, and gracefully to 

1 Preface to tlie Italian Civil Code, published in 1866. 
2 An English Code, by Sheldon Amos, M.A., 1S73. 



32 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

the stimulus from headquarters. The time has now arrived 
for England to pay less attention to the extension of her 
boundaries and more attention to the unification of her parts. 
It is for her to discover and perfect a political system work- 
able over a world-wide area, avoiding centralisation on the 
one hand and disintegration on the other. This can be done 
only by a careful sifting of central and of local functions, 
whether the subordinate locality be a wide colony or a compact 
borough ; whether it be situated at the Antipodes or on the 
banks of the Thames. 

This is the great problem for the Anglo-Saxon people. I 
believe the mathematical genius who once demarcated London 
for certain fiscal purposes performed the operation with the aid 
of a map and a pair of compasses. N"ot far behind him in 
arbitrariness come those who would erect Wales into a separate 
province on the strength of a historic name, a half- dead 
language, and an annual Eisteddfod of sentimentalists. The 
Welsh are a fine people, but there are probably more of them 
in England than in Wales, and there are more people of 
English descent in Wales than there are of pure Welsh. 
Again, beyond the artificially bolstered -up system of Scotch 
law there is little or nothing to justify the drawing of a 
political boundary line between England and Scotland. 
Whether the Northumbrians are more akin to the Lowland 
Scotch or to the people of Devonshire or Kent is a question 
for ethnographers. If the Scotch law is in some respects, 
whether in substance or procedure, better than our own, why 
should we rest content with the inferior? And if in other 
respects English is better than Scotch law, clearly some per- 
sons in Scotland, if a minority, have a right to require that 
which deals justice. The case of Ireland, with the exception 
of certain recent legislation of a local and temporary char- 
acter, presents fewer difficulties. Most of the English law, 
both common and statute, extends to Ireland, and if half the 
ingenuity which has been spent in differentiating the two 
legal systems had been expended on their assimilation, their 
unification would long since have been accomplished. The 
reckless way in which tiny dependencies like Gibraltar, 
Heligoland, the Channel Islands, and the Isle of Man have 



I THE STATE: ITS GROWTH AND EVOLUTION 33 

been permitted to make laws, not of a merely local effect, but 
conflicting with what should be the law of the whole empire, 
is remarkable. A like carelessness is noticeable in the United 
States of America (though to a diminishing extent). The 
New York Civil Code is a particularly feeble attempt at the codi- 
fication of the English Common Law by utterly incompetent 
persons. But whether codification is desirable or practicable, 
or neither, in no way affects the importance of maintaining an 
identical legal system for the whole of Anglo- Saxondom. At 
the same time it is idle to pretend that this can be effected until 
some philosophical distinction has been drawn between matters 
which are in themselves local and matters which necessarily 
concern the whole empire. The application of the principles 
underlying this distinction is the great problem for the English- 
speaking peoples of to-day. Until this is done, all attempts 
at codification of the law are foredoomed to failure, all efforts, 
however benevolently conceived, towards the " conciliation " of 
discontented branches of the British Empire (whether in 
regions populated by Hindus, or by Dutch Boers, or by French 
Canadians, or by Scotch or Irish Celts, or by any of the 
numerous races of the world who for good or ill are destined to 
flourish or to perish under the Anglo-Saxon social system) are 
and will be vain and futile. 

The art of government is making a new departure. A 
new day has dawned for humanity. The triumph of democracy 
is complete ; and imperial law must henceforth be based on 
individual and local liberty. 



CHAPTEE II 

THE STRUCTUEE OF THE STATE 

The science of politics and the art of politics are two distinct 
branches of study, and should be kept so ; just as the science 
of mechanics is a very different matter from the art of 
engineering. One may be an adept in the science, and yet 
utterly unskilled in the art — quite unable to apply the con- 
clusions of the science to the art. So also we may be expert 
at an art, and yet be more ignorant than we should be of the 
science on which that art is based. Tor example, many an 
able mining -engineer is insufficiently acquainted with the 
truths of geology, while many an experienced geologist is 
altogether ignorant of the art of mining. At the same time, 
though it is very desirable to keep the two studies distinct, it 
is impossible for the practical man to carry on his work to the 
best advantage without some acquaintance with the underlying 
speculative science. 

Now the science of politics, by whatever name known, is 
very little studied at the present day by our statesmen. They 
even affect to despise it. On the other hand men of science, 
or as they have been styled, " cloistered economists," are prone 
to imagine themselves capable of solving all kinds of political 
problems simply by the aid of scientij&c research, without any 
practical experience whatever of the facts and conditions of the 
situation. Let me give an illustration ; sociologists have 
reached the conclusion that the end towards which civilisation 
is moving, the goal which it bids fair to attain, is a system of 
self-government. In other words, self-government is the 
government of the future, and presumably therefore the best 



CHAP. II THE STRUCTURE OF THE STATE 35 

government. But it is for the practical statesman to decide 
when any particular nation is ripe for the application of the 
principle. 

Few will deny that England has reached this stage of 
development; but when we look farther afield, when we pass 
even to India, where the people are indeed in a comparatively 
high degree of civilisation, we find grave doubts whether they 
are yet fit to exercise the functions of a self-governing nation. 
Certain doctrinaires in this country, but quite inexperienced in 
Indian affairs, are indeed anxious to thrust it upon them, but 
those who have more practical knowledge of the inhabitants 
are of a contrary opinion. And even those book-learned but 
inexperienced young statesmen would shrink from imposing 
free institutions on such races as the Zulus. We all remember 
the reception accorded by the Turks to Midhat's paper con- 
stitution. It remained a dead letter. Free institutions are no 
doubt good, but they are good only for peoples who demand 
them. 

If this is true of uncivilised races, of semi-civilised races, 
and even of races which like the Hindu have reached a fairly 
high degree of civilisation, it follows that there must have 
been a time in our own course of development when we also 
were unripe for free institutions. When was that date passed ? 
Again, the same people is ready for one form of freedom before 
it is ripe for another. A nation is not suddenly transformed 
from a despotism into a free democracy ; it acquires its liberties 
one by one, and at dates separated by long intervals of time. 
Hence it is quite conceivable that there are some forms of 
freedom for which even the English people are not yet 
prepared. We are therefore compelled to qualify the general 
and too -sweeping proposition "Self-government is good" to 
this effect, " Self-government is good for those peoples which 
are ripe for it," or in other words, it is good for those for whom 
it is good. And for whom is it good ? To this question the 
cloistered economist has no answer. It is a question of 
experience, a question for the practical statesman. 

Again, philosophical jurists have detected a distinct ten- 
dency in the laws of civilised nations towards individual 
ownership, in land as in other things. All forms of common 



36 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

ownership operate in restraint of transfer. And this is true 
not only of tribal and family ownership, but also in a less 
degree of what is called dual ownership, where the interests of 
the two parties are diverse. But, although the tendency 
towards separate ownership is strongly marked, it by no means 
follows that any particular people is ripe for it. In the case 
of Ireland, the English land system was thrust upon a nation 
which had not yet emerged from the stage of tribal ownership, 
and the effects of the shock have not yet spent themselves. 
The same thing was done again in Bengal a century ago. 
Lord Cornwallis's arguments in favour of his scheme of 
land reform are unimpeachable, the one flaw in them was 
this : basing his predictions as to the effect of the separate 
system in Bengal on his experience of the w^orking of 
that system in his own country, he overlooked the extreme 
unlikeness between the two peoples. The immediate con- 
sequences were injury to the Zemindars, cruelty to the Eyots, 
and permanent loss of revenue to the Government. And at 
the present day the question seems to be whether it will not be 
deemed necessary to modify the arrangement, even at the cost 
of England's honour (no very high price they say nowadays). 
Here, again, is a problem for the practical statesman : must we 
refit the boot to the foot, or leave the foot to grow to the boot ? 
It is merely a question as to how far one or other process has 
been already in part effected. But the sociologist has said his 
last word, namely, the highest civilisation will adopt the system 
of separate or individual ownership. 

I have dwelt at some length on the distinction between 
the art and the science of politics, because we are at the 
present moment exposed to two dangers — the one is the rule-of- 
thumb politician, who turns a deaf ear to all the teachings of 
science ; the other is the " professor," who hastens to apply the 
inductions of science to cases which do not supply the requisite 
conditions. 

In order to understand political institutions, to track their 
general tendencies, and to predict their future we must study 
them from their origin, from the earliest times of which we have 
any records. The germs of all existing laws and institutions 
will be found far back in the days when our ancestors were in 



THE STRUCTURE OF THE STATE 



37 



that stage of civilisation which is called the " patriarchal stage." 
In the archaic independent family all our modern complex 
institutions existed in embryo, just as the little acorn contains 
within itself all the potentialities of a spreading oak. The 
earliest form of the State is the family with its internal 
despotism and its external independence ; for it must be 
remembered that the family was amenable to no law from 
without. Curiously enough, Austin, writing before any 
progress had been made in law-history, goes out of his way to 
refuse the title of political society to a single family. " Let 
us suppose," he says, " that a single family of savages lives in 
absolute estrangement from every other community. And let 
us suppose that the father, the chief of this insulated family, 
receives habitual obedience from the mother and children. 
l!Tow without an application of the terms which would smack 
of the ridiculous, we could hardly style the society a society 
political and independent, the imperative father a monarch or 
sovereign, or the obedient mother and children subjects." He 
quotes Montesquieu in support of this view. Antiquarian 
research has thrown much light on the condition of society in 
its infancy, and the situation pictured by Austin is now known 
to have been a very accurate description of the condition of 
our ancestors. The father was king, priest, and judge, and the 
whole system was an absolute despotism. The early Hebrew 
records furnish us with pictures of these little independent 
nomad families, wandering about over the face of the earth at 
war with all mankind. It is from this period that the institu- 
tion of monarchy dates. 

But when these families came to group themselves together 
in clans and tribes for mutual protection and advantage there 
was a tendency for the heads of the families so compounded to 
claim an equal voice in the management of the general 
concerns. Thus resulted what is called an oligarchy, or, in the 
language of the rulers themselves, an aristocracy. It is true 
that there are forces at work which for a very long period tend 
to cause the reins of government to pass into the hands of 
some member of the ruling body — some man of great force of 
character or natural superior power. The point to note now 
is that from the date at which families first began to compound 



3S INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

themselves into houses or " gentes," we have the possibility of 
aristocratic government. As we have seen, these houses or 
clans again recompound themselves into tribes, which in process 
of time aggregate into the larger group called the nation. 

A tendency has been observed by historians for the govern- 
ment of the nation to gravitate steadily into the hands of 
larger and larger numbers of the people, till the ruling body 
comes to comprise all the individual members of the com- 
munity. It is not urged that this state has ever yet been 
reached, but that such is the observable tendency. This 
tendency has been styled democratic. There are many forces 
in society operating in a contrary direction, but as social 
development proceeds, the forces acting in the direction of 
democracy increasingly prevail. This is a well -based political 
induction. We are not now concerned with the causes of this 
tendency — the fact is patent. ISTo doubt the increase of 
knowledge, and its diffusion among all classes of society, 
together with increased facilities for communication between 
the masses and their classes, and the increasing power of 
organisation, will together have the effect of rendering the rule 
of the few for the good of the few distasteful to the many, 
while at the same time supplying the populace with the means 
of rectifying the anomaly. 

Having recognised the truth that civilised nations have 
tended, are tending, and will continue to tend in a democratic 
direction, let us proceed to ask the question. Is the tendency 
a good one ? Is it a tendency to be desired or merely one to be 
put up with as a necessary evil? I believe the very best 
friends of democracy have admitted its inherent weakness and 
vices. I^ot to multiply authorities, let me cite one who is 
universally admitted to have been a staunch Liberal and a true 
friend of the people. Lord Brougham writes : — " The demo- 
cratic form has some virtues of a high order. The defects, 
however, are equal to the excellences. The supreme power is 
placed in wholly irresponsible hands. The tyranny of the 
multitude is intolerable, because it pervades the whole com- 
munity searchingly, and oppresses the humblest as well as 
the highest. Faction is even more predominant than in 
aristocracies on certain subjects, and always the most 



II THE STRUCTURE OF THE STATE 39 

important. Anything like free discussion is impossible. The 
administration of justice is constantly interfered with, especi- 
ally of criminal justice. There is no security for steady and 
consistent policy, either in foreign or domestic affairs ; a risk 
of entire and violent change attends the administration and 
even the constitution ; and the peace of the country as well 
abroad as at home is in perpetual and imminent danger." 

Few will deny that there is at least a considerable amount 
of truth in this impeachment. The practical question for us 
all is whether, in spite of its inherent faults, we are to accept 
the principle of democracy, or to fall back on some system of 
aristocracy or monarchy, or as Lord Brougham himself advocates, 
on some mixed system ? Seeing that to democracy applies the 
old proverb, "Too many cooks spoil the broth," seeing that ^ 
divided counsels result in delay and sometimes in disaster, 
seeing that democratic government is wanting in continuity 
of purpose, is shifty and inconstant, swayed by sudden gusts 
of popular impulse, and above all, that it embodies the will 
rather of the ignorant than of the wise : admitting all these 
charges, shall we in despair look elsewhere for the form of 
government of the future, or shall we rather seek to discover 
the several causes of these observed diseases, and if possible 
the cure ? 

I hardly feel called upon to furnish illustrations of these 
observed vices of popular government. Those who care to see 
them fully exposed may be referred to the late Sir Henry 
Maine's very able work on the subject. But to take one very 
recent instance : I do not say that the Conservative Govern- 
ment was wrong some few years ago to commence laying down 
the Quetta Eailway with a view to improving our defences 
against the threatened Eussian advance upon Afghanistan. 
And I do not here say that the Liberals were wrong to pull 
it up again ; but I do say most emphatically that the country 
was wrong which permitted such a piece of extravagant fooling 
as the combination of the two acts. What would be thought 
of an employer of labour who set one gang of men to dig a 
hole and another gang to fill it up again ? As we should 
regard this man, so the other civihsed countries of Europe 
probably regard us. And are they not justified ? 



40 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

Instances might be cited in which democracies have gone 
nigh to committing political suicide, as for example where 
carried away by temporary enthusiasm or hero-worship they 
have voluntarily abdicated in favour of a dictator ; arming him 
with sufficient powers to enable him to defy the quickly- 
repentant will of the people. Both Cicero and Tacitus, who 
knew something of democratic impulsiveness and instability, 
have been cited in favour of a mixed form of government : 
" Statuo esse," writes the former, " optime constitutam rem- 
publicam quae ex tribus generibus illis, regali, optimo et 
populari, modice confusa." Similarly Tacitus hints that such 
a mixed form is almost too good to be hoped for. " Cunctas 
nationes et urbes, populus aut primores aut singuli regunt. 
D electa ex his et constituta reipublicse forma laudari facilius 
quam evenire." We have attained to that laudable con- 
stitution, and we ought, therefore, in the opinion of Lord 
Brougham, to rest and be thankful. Either he fails to see, or 
he wilfully shuts his eyes to the price that must necessarily 
be paid for this complex arrangement. In order to perpetuate 
what he would call our present mixed form of democratic 
monarchy we must be prepared to stereotype what is left of 
caste among our people, we must respect hereditary privilege, 
we must arrest the growing tendency in the direction of civil 
equality. ITo ; the advantages may be great, but the price is 
too high for an Englishman. 

I have said that the strongest argument of all against pure 
democracy is the apparent absurdity of putting the reins of 
government into the hands of the most ignorant classes of the 
community. Is it expedient, feasible, or even safe to place the 
inexperienced masses (no fault of theirs) at the helm of the 
State ? Eecently we have extended the franchise to the 
agricultural labourer, and I ask any unprejudiced person 
whether he is honestly of opinion that Hodge is really 
qualified to make laws either immediately or vicariously ? 
Would he accept Hodge's ruling on a delicate question of 
morals ? Is he prepared to lend a wistful and a wondering 
ear to the inspired utterances of the modern EKsha ? " Vox 
populi vox Dei." Good ; but the voice of the people is not 
necessarily the howl of the numerical majority. Apart from 



II THE STRUCTURE OF THE STATE 41 

all false sentiment, apart from mob flattery (the maudlin foible 
of the day), apart from democratic bias, everybody knows, and 
honest men admit, that Hodge's several views on things in 
general are not of the most enlightened character. And I for 
one positively decline to submit passively to his dictation in 
all the numerous concerns of life which are usually regarded 
as falling within the province of the law-giver. Let us face 
this problem fairly and squarely. ISTot on the one hand by 
falling back in dismay into the arms of a doomed class 
despotism, nor on the other hand by falsely attributing to 
the uneducated or half-educated untold faculties of intuition 
which in our inmost hearts we know well they do not possess. 

The art of legislation is a very difficult and complicated 
study ; much more so than farming or boot-making for example. 
And yet, as has been remarked with amazement by thinkers of 
the weight of Socrates, Shakespeare, and Spencer, whereas a 
lifetime is required for the mastery of the humblest handi- 
crafts, almost any ignorant busybody is credited with intuitively 
understanding that most intricate art legislation. The sole 
qualifications of a past master seem to be noisy self-assertion, 
burning class-envy, and fanatical faith in some social nostrum. 
Were I to walk into an engine-room and point out to the 
engineer the intolerable waste of steam entailed by a hole in 
the boiler, and urge him promptly to stop it, he might turn 
upon me with some such reply as this : " Sir, that hole is 
called the safety-valve ; if you would bring your mighty 
brain-power to bear on some subject with which previous study 
has qualified you to deal, without making an ass of yourself, 
you might be doing more good to the community and less 
harm to me. Good morning." And yet this same engineer 
will walk into the great legislative laboratory where the com- 
plex parts of the machinery of State are forged, and with the 
serenest self-confidence take off his coat and set to work. 
What is the explanation of this anomalous state of things ? 

The functions of the legislator are twofold. Under a 
democratic system therefore the functions of the citizen are 
twofold ; for every citizen is by hypothesis a legislator. The 
first is that of making laws ; the second is that of safeguarding 
liberties. These are clearly two different functions. And I 



42 INDIVIDUALISM r A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

am at once prepared to admit and to contend that every 
citizen is not only morally justified but also morally bound to 
take his share in legislation so far as this duty of safeguarding 
his own liberty is concerned. The process of breaking his own 
fetters is a very different process from that of forging shackles 
for his neighbours. I am aware that the two are usually con- 
founded and spoken of as though they were one and the same 
thing. But a very little reflection is required to see that they 
are two very different things. It does not need a bootmaker 
to find out where the shoe pinches ; the wearer is competent 
to do that. It takes a bootmaker to make a boot that will 
not pinch. Hence every citizen has a clear right to a voice 
in the legislature, if by that is meant the right to safeguard 
his own liberty against all law-makers — to see that no law 
is passed which infringes upon his own rights and liberties. 
And under a representative system it is the duty of the 
representative to see that no law is passed which infringes 
upon the rights of his constituents. That is his duty. Hodge, 
therefore, has as good a right as any other citizen to watch the 
course of legislation on his own behalf, and to move for the 
repeal of any existing law which unduly interferes with his 
freedom of action. This is surely a very different matter 
from worrying and harassing other people. 

And here is another argument for democracy. The end, 
aim, and test of all government — such is human nature — is the 
welfare of the ruling class. All history proves it. Human 
nature is such that it is absolutely impossible to provide against 
it. Hence aristocracies always have made laws for the good 
of the aristocratic class, and only indirectly and mediately for 
the good of the whole people. When the whole people has 
the making of the laws, then the test of the laws is necessarily 
the welfare of the whole people. Bad laws may of course be 
passed, but they will tend to fall into abeyance and finally to 
perish. The welfare of the whole people being the object of 
those who have the making of the laws, a defective system has 
a tendency to readjust itself. Good institutions will survive ; 
bad institutions will die. By a bad institution is meant bad 
for the ruling class — the law-making class. And that is the 
reason why it tends to perish. Little by little those who 



II THE STRUCTURE OF THE STATE 43 

suffer from it come consciously to see or unconsciously to feel 
the true cause of the mischief, and to uproot it accordingly ; 
just as our own upper-class rulers have learnt the harmfulness 
to their own order of many early laws of their own creation, 
and have, during the last five or six centuries, made great 
strides in the direction of freedom by removing many State 
restrictions which impeded their own liberty of action. These 
reforms have also incidentally benefited the whole people in 
many instances ; but such was not, in truth, the end and cause 
of reform. As evidence of this it can be shown that that which 
is good for the aristocratic class is not always good for the 
people; but that so long as the ruling class actually does 
benefit by it as a class, so long it will continue to survive. 
And this constitutes a real danger for the people. A protect- 
ive duty on corn did undoubtedly benefit the landowners, and 
its reimposition would undoubtedly benefit them now; and 
although the repeal of the corn -laws has been an unmixed 
blessing to the people, we may safely say that it would never 
have been brought about but for the swamping of the land- 
owning vote by the Eeform Act of 1832. The country might 
have suffered for years, but the stimulus to remove the evil 
did not exist in the class which then ruled the land. 

If this reasoning be sound we have reached the conclusion 
that the democratic form of government is not only defensible, 
but also highly desirable, and even essential to social evolution ; 
but the doctrine is subject to this qualification — that the func- 
tion of the citizen is the safeguarding of his own liberties, and 
not the manufacture of restraints on the liberty of his fellows. 

Each new layer added to the electorate seems to have to 
learn the lesson de novo that sweet as it is to bully others, it 
is sweeter still not to be bullied oneself. About thirty years 
ago the more powerful section of the ruling body had learnt 
the lesson thoroughly, or nearly so ; but since then we have 
had two extensions of the franchise, and in each case it has 
become increasingly manifest that the lesson has been unlearnt 
by the new recruits. This we may regret ; but it is a comfort 
to reflect that they are of the same metal as their predecessors, 
and will doubtless show an equal aptitude for self-government. 
They will speedily learn the great lesson of liberty. It is 



44 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSIEM OF POLITICS chap. 

only an abundant faith in the destiny of the race, the fullest 
confidence in the stuff of which this people is made, and a 
reasoned conviction of the truth of the democratic principle, 
that can buoy any honest and thoughtful person up at the 
present time to help forward the popular movement. Indeed, 
some of the proposals emanating from the new contingent are 
so wild, so dishonest, so silly, and withal so impracticable, that 
it is no wonder if some of even the faithful begin to waver. 
Fortunately, in the conflict of opposing interests lies the 
salvation of liberty. The principle of true Liberalism is, in 
the words of Mr. Gladstone, " trust in the people, qualified by 
prudence ; the principle of Conservatism is mistrust of the 
people, qualified by fear." This is the true spirit of en- 
lightened democratism. It is because of faith in the destiny 
of our race that we may look without dread on its temporary 
aberrations. We see that hitherto they have marched steadily 
forward, not without turnings and even backslidings, it is true, 
but still, in the long run, forward on the path of progress. 
Clinging to this faith we may look not with fear but with 
confidence to the indefinite extension of the franchise, in the 
belief that whatever may be the temptations held out to them by 
place-seekers and dishonest demagogues, there is ingrained in the 
inmost nature of Englishmen an inherited love of justice and a 
consuming zeal for freedom which, in the long run, must prevail. 

There seem to be but three reasons which any one is 
justified in adducing for not accepting the democratic prin- 
ciple : 1. Because he does not know what is meant by the 
term. 2. Because he lacks faith in the destiny of his own 
people. 3. Because he is consciously actuated by class 
interest, and is a traitor to his country. 

There is one warning which all good Democrats must take 
to heart : Beware of mistaking a sham democracy for a real 
one. Government by a class is not democracy. Democracy 
is the government of the people by the people — the whole 
people. Government by a class, even though that class be 
the largest class in the country, is not democracy. Indeed it 
is a question whether the despotism of a large class is not, in 
many respects, worse than the despotism of a small class or a 
single individual. It is less amenable to the ordinary 



II THE STRUCTURE OF THE STATE 45 

resources of revolution. And here it should be pointed out 
that the doctrine of the Divine Eight of the Majority, or, in 
secular phraseology, the doctrine of " counting heads to save 
the trouble of breaking them," can be carried, and is carried, a 
great deal too far. There are two principal qualifications of 
the doctrine which are usually lost sight of. Upon these it is 
important to lay stress, because modern democratic State 
socialism is based upon their non-recognition. Firstly the 
units of society are not equal. Under a system of adult 
suffrage it is quite conceivable that on a question of family law 
nearly all the women might be found voting on one side, and 
nearly all the men on the other. In such a case it is absurd 
to pretend that counting heads would be a peaceful substitute 
for fighting it out. Similarly at the present day, in all 
democratic countries under a very extended franchise, apart 
from sentiment, ten rich men count for more, as a fad, than a 
thousand wage -receivers. It is merely a foolish fiction to 
pretend that the majority vote is a test of the will of the 
people ; because the will of a people (like the will of an 
individual animal) is the resultant of forces operating in 
various directions. That which the doctrine presumes we 
want to ascertain is. What would be the result if each 
question were fought out ? And the answer is certainly not 
always to be found by counting heads 'pro and con. 

The second flaw in the doctrine is the false assumption 
that every one is prepared to fight for that which he desires to 
obtain — that the desire is uniformly urgent. This is not true. 
A big dog will seldom attack a little dog in possession of a 
bone. He desires the bone. So does the little dog. But 
their motives are not equally urgent. In a state of unorganised 
anarchy — anarchy as it is pictured by those who do not under- 
stand it — if two unequally -matched men meet over a prize 
coveted by both, they do not, as a fact, take each other's 
measure and decide the question accordingly. The stronger 
man may be actuated by a weaker desire. He may be less 
hungry or more averse to trouble and pain. And in any case 
it is probably, on the average, the best economy from his own 
point of view to buy off the weaker man by making a division 
of the prize — not necessarily an equal division, but one satis- 



46 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

factory to the weaker man in view of his inferiority. To 
apply this consideration to practical politics it may be true 
that the majority in this country are favourable, say, to 
universal vaccination. It does not follow that a compulsory 
law embodies the will of the people, because every man who 
is opposed to that law is at least ten times more anxious to 
gain his end than his adversaries are to gain theirs. He is 
ready to make far greater sacrifices to attain it. One man 
rather wishes for what he regards as a slight sanitary safe- 
guard ; the other is determined not to submit to a gross 
violation of his liberty. How differently the two are actu- 
ated ! One man is willing to pay a farthing in the pound for 
a desirable object ; the other is ready to risk property, and 
perhaps life, to defeat that object. In such cases as this it is 
sheer folly to pretend that counting heads is a fair indication 
of the forces behind. 

Majorities for their own sakes would do well not to bring 
the minorities to bay. The result may be either painful or 
humiliating — painful, as when the minority (in heads, in 
riches, and in organisation) withstood the tyranny of the 
Stuarts ; humiliating, as when England bowed down before 
the determined Boers of the Transvaal. It is not wise to 
threaten what you do not mean to perform. Minorities 
mean action ; majorities, as a rule, do not. 

Having reached the conclusion that all history shows an 
increasing tendency towards a democratic form of government, 
and, moreover, that democracy is not only inevitable but 
desirable in all respects, we come now to consider by what 
means the government of the people can be best effected. 

To begin with, all those who have a voice in the legislature 
can assemble in some large and convenient place, and there 
and then discuss and settle the affairs of State. This was the 
case in ancient Athens, where, at times of great excitement, 
the Ecclesia convened in the Agora would number many 
thousands of voters. The sense of the meeting was taken by 
a show of hands, and as might be expected, even in so small a 
state as Athens, the proceedings were often of a noisy and 
tumultuous description. Another great disadvantage of the 
arrangement was that, when only ordinary affairs of State had 



II THE STRUCTURE OF THE STATE 47 

to be transacted, and no burning questions were to the front, 
there seems to have been great difficulty in getting together 
the requisite quorum of five or six thousand persons. Every 
citizen (male) over twenty years of age and unconvicted of 
any serious offence, having a right to a seat, so to speak, in 
Parliament, there was no particular dignity associated with the 
function, and it was found necessary not only to pay the 
members a small sum for each separate attendance, but also 
to fine those who absented themselves. We have in England 
a functionary called the party whip, whose business it is to 
make a good muster of his party when any measure of 
importance is before the House ; but in Athens the whips 
were not metaphorically so called. Certain public slaves 
sallied forth armed with ropes previously steeped in cold 
vermilion, and any stray members encountered were gently 
rope-ended, and so branded with red, like sheep, as evidence 
against them. 

Again, the duties of the Ecclesia were not only very wide, 
but also very indefinite, and instead of becoming more and more 
specialised, the functions undertaken by it seem to have grown 
increasingly multifarious as the power of the aristocratic body 
dwindled away. Of the Boule, of the Areiopagus, of the 
Ephetse, etc., it is not necessary here to speak in detail, it 
is enough to say that they were not bodies expressly created 
by the all-powerful popular body for the purpose of helping 
and checking and otherwise conducing to the smooth working 
of that central body, like the Senate of the United States of 
America, or the Privy Council of this country ; on the contrary, 
they dated from further back than the democratic regime, and like 
our House of Lords they were found ready-made, and were used 
for purposes for which they were neither intended nor fitted. 

Nearly everything of a general character which has been 
said of the Athenian Ecclesia is true mutatis mutandis of the 
Eoman Comitia Curiata. Whatever may have been the 
original nature of the Comitia, howsoever the vote may have 
been taken in its earlier days ; whether each paterfamilias 
counted for one, or whether each gens or each curia counted 
for one, and the heads of families voted within their own curia 
as to what should be the vote of that curia — all these questions 



48 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

though interesting, do not concern ns here — the point is that 
the Comitia was the assembly of the populus, and that the 
individual citizens took a direct part in its deliberations. The 
struggle between the democracy and the oligarchy is, in plain 
words, the struggle for a voice in the government between 
the adult males in the State on the one hand, and the heads 
of the clans of which the State is composed on the other. The 
heads of houses would naturally resist the growing tendency 
of democracy to disintegrate the family and to reintegrate its 
constituents as units in a homogeneous state. Of course those 
in whom the authority of the Curia was originally vested 
would see their interest in resisting this tendency. The 
grandfathers, the elders, the venerable " fogies," who composed 
the Senate of Eome, the Boule of Athens, and the Gerusia of 
Sparta, would lean towards the old law rather than the new, 
and consequently their power would tend to pass from them 
and be arrogated by the popular and progressive body. 

But even Eome, though considerably larger than Athens, 
was small in comparison with any modern self-governing state ; 
strata of the population are now included among the citizens 
which were then taken no account of, and if, even in those 
days, the processes of legislation were unwieldy and discontinu- 
ous, what would they be now if our five millions of voters had 
to be convened for the transaction of public business ? This 
has been the problem for modern Europe to solve. Either the 
size of independent states must be kept down within very narrow 
limits, or the poorer strata of the population must be dis- 
franchised, or else some other system of self-government must 
be invented. 

First, there has been suggested and tried, that modern 
imitation of the plebiscitum so far adapted to modern require- 
ments as to admit of the local publication and discussion of the 
question before the country, and the taking of the general 
opinion piecemeal in the several localities. This system was 
adopted by the late Emperor of the French. But this very 
illustration brings to light a great danger in the process. To 
avoid the constant friction and expense of polling the constitu- 
encies, the plan readily suggests itself of putting the question 
to be decided in a very general form. Instead of asking the 



II THE STRUCTURE OF THE STATE 49 

people, " Will you have this law ? " and then a few days after, 
" Will you have this ? " what can be simpler than to ask them 
once for all, " Will you have any law which I, the head of the 
Executive, may propose, till further notice ? " The thing is done ; 
the further notice never comes ; it is nobody's business to take 
the opinion of the people ; the head of the Executive knows 
better than to risk his position ; and from an independent 
democracy, we have suddenly converted the Government into 
an absolute autocracy. 

A less dangerous plan has been proposed and tried (with 
some success at the present day in Switzerland). It is known 
as the Eeferendum ! The main objection to the Eeferendum, 
apart from the friction and expense, is the principle implied, 
to the effect that every citizen is capable, without any previous 
instruction, not only of knowing where bad legislation pinches 
him, but also what sort of legislation is good for other classes 
besides his own. This is in itself a fatal objection to the plan. 

The only other method which presents itself is that known 
as "representative government." The whole machinery of 
representation is a complex growth, and by no means so simple 
an arrangement as some might be disposed to think. The germ 
of the idea lies in the system of voting by proxy. A busy man 
in a distant province is unable to find time or money to journey 
up to the metropolis to take part in the national deliberations ; 
but a rich and leisured man of his neighbourhood is going up, 
and he empowers him to vote for both. Others hear of the 
arrangement, and being anxious to record their votes but unable 
to afford it, they also club together in batches according to their 
political views and send up one man to represent each batch. 
Eepresentative government is a comparatively modern invention, 
for it is a mistake to suppose that the so-called delegates sent 
up to the Amphictyonic Councils to represent the tribes were, 
properly speaking, delegates at all. They attended in their own 
right, like the members of our House of Lords, as heads of the 
senior family or gens of the tribe. 

The principle of legislation by proxy having once obtained 
recognition, a regular system for carrying out the arrangement 
would soon establish itself. And here we have the germ 
of the assembly of popular representatives in which 



50 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap 

each citizen, as such, counts for one, apart from all tribal 
considerations. The simplicity of the system and the greatly- 
reduced friction of the governmental machine would naturally 
have the effect, and, as a matter of history, did have the effect, 
of stimulating legislation. It would tend, and did tend, 
to become more searching, more detailed, and far more complex. 
The qualifications of the representative would be higher. It 
would require a man of more than the average culture to master 
the existing law, and to draw the line between the mere defence 
of the liberties of his constituents and the imposition of 
restraints on other members of the community. Hence the 
custom naturally arose of electing a deputy to go up to Parlia- 
ment, not only to speak but also to think for those whom he 
represented. Where the line should be drawn is still an un- 
solved problem. The principles by which we must decide 
where the liberty of one man becomes tyranny over another 
man have nowhere yet been clearly formulated. It is sufficient 
here to show that the difficulty would be early felt, and the 
effect would be the election of representatives empowered to 
think and act for those who sent them, and not to serve merely 
as mouthpieces or messengers. This discovery, and the com- 
plicated representative institutions erected upon it in all modern 
democratic states, must never be lost sight of in proposals for 
reform and further advance on the democratic path. It is for- 
getfulness of this principle which explains the favour with 
which the Eeferendum is regarded in certain quarters where 
anything like sympathy with class rule would have been least 
looked for. 

Perhaps the foregoing considerations will enable us to lay 
down with confidence certain principles (or what Brougham 
called " canons " i) of representative government. 

1. The first principle I would submit is that the vote is a 
right and not a trust. Every man has a right, a moral right, to 
see that his own liberty is not infringed upon by his neighbours 
under the pretence of safeguarding their liberties. Any attempt 
of the sort he is morally justified in resisting by force if 
necessary. He is not bound to submit by any contract, actual 

^ I confess I am not in love with the word "canons." It savours too much 
to my mind of blind dogma, of rules based on authority rather than reason. 



II THE STRUCTURE OF THE STATE 51 

or tacit, or otherwise than by fear of the brute force of those 
who are opposed to him. The bearing of this principle 
on the question of bribery and corruption is interesting, but 
this is not the place to discuss it. 

2. By logical implication the suffrage must be universal, 
and here let me recall what I have already said ; namely, that 
although science may and does point to this consummation as 
the end and goal towards which we are tending, it by no 
means necessarily follows that this or any other nation is ripe 
for it at the present time. This is a question for the practical 
statesman. My own opinion for what it is worth is, that 
we are in this country ready for universal suffrage, male and 
female. ISTay more, I fail to see why even the paupers should 
be denied this right. Have they not a claim to see that their 
liberties, microscopic though they may be, are not trampled 
upon ? Either they have no right to State support, or 
they have a clear right to see that what State support 
they receive is not less than that which they have a legal 
claim to. 

3. Thirdly, we are driven to the conclusion that no qualifica- 
tions can be required either of the voter or of the deputy. It 
used to be contended that the property qualification was a 
guarantee that respectable persons should be returned to the 
House of Commons. But in the first place, property and 
respectability do not necessarily go together ; secondly, it is a 
simple matter and was a common practice to convey property to 
the candidate before the election and to have it reconveyed 
immediately after he had taken his seat, so that the supposed 
security was a farce ; and thirdly, there seems to be no 
particular reason why a parliamentary representative should be 
what is called respectable, so long as he is chosen and 
trusted by his fellow-men to watch over their interests in the 
legislature. 

4. This brings us to the fourth " canon " ; for if one class 
of persons in the community has no right to prescribe rules for 
another class as to what manner of representative they must 
elect, it follows that Parliament itself should not be permitted 
through the vote of the majority to exclude any duly-elected 
member who has been returned by an independent constituency. 



52 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

The admission of such a claim on the part of the majority is 
out of harmony with all the principles of democracy, and is 
nothing less than class despotism. 

5. The fifth principle which I will submit has already 
been touched upon. Though essential to the sound working 
of democratic institutions, it is not likely just now to meet 
with very general approval. It is, that a parliamentary deputy 
must be a representative, and not a mere delegate. Let me 
distinctly define my position : I admit the right of the con- 
stituency to control the acts of its deputy in all things down 
to the minutest particulars, but I dispute the wisdom; and I 
denounce the practice as calculated to impair the process of 
legislation. I have a perfect right to choose my own boot- 
maker, and, if I think proper, to stand over him and dictate 
the mode of his working ; but I should be a fool for my pains. 
Similarly if I want some one to look after my interests in 
Parliament, I am justified in choosing my man for the purpose, 
and I shall show my sense in choosing some one who has know- 
ledge and experience of that kind of work ; but having chosen 
him, I must send him unpledged, unfettered, and free to adopt 
such methods as he may think fit. By all means let me ask him 
questions and sound him on all points of interest to me ; let 
me thoroughly cross-examine him and " heckle " him ; let me 
choose the candidate most in accord with my own views, but 
having taken these precautions let me send to Parliament not 
a telephone but a man. 

6. The next principle is even more important than the 
last. The end and object of parliamentary institutions is, as 
we have seen, the representation of the various and confiicting 
interests in the country. Suppose we desired to learn the 
general wishes of the animal kingdom, we should ask each 
species to send a representative, or perhaps a proportionate 
number of representatives ; we certainly should not map the 
surface of the earth out in parallelograms, and get a represent- 
ative from each parallelogram. Indeed, there is practically 
nothing whatever in common between the inhabitants of a 
given area. The consequence of territorial representation is 
similar to that of multiple election ; interests are hardly re- 
presented at all. Each deputy is a sort of miniature parlia- 



II THE STRUCTURE OF THE STATE 53 

ment in himself; a colourless, insipid, fasciculus of negations 
without a definite program, or even a definite idea. To begin 
with, as we all know, the aim of a candidate is to say as 
little as he possibly can before the election, for fear of giving 
offence to one or other of the groups in his constituency. If 
he says a word in favour of temperance, the licensed victuallers 
look askance at him ; if he ventures to suggest that a poor 
man has as good a right to his Sunday pint as a rich man to 
his Sunday bottle of port, the teetotallers gather together and 
talk ominously about the sons of Belial. If he dares to say 
more about the State church than that the question has not 
yet come within the domain of practical politics, a thousand 
tongues are instantly set in motion about the godlessness of 
advanced politicians. That an enemy can do more harm than 
a friend can do good, is well known by all who are conversant 
with electioneering ; and the consequence is that every candi- 
date confines himself as much as possible to the merest 
generalities. He is going to do something great, but no one 
can learn exactly what ; he is in favour of everything which is 
calculated to benefit the people ; he has the interests of his 
constituents at heart ; and so forth. It is impossible to declare 
his opinions boldly and frankly. 

Such are some of the effects of the representation of areas. 
Its results are plainly visible in the invertebrate condition of 
the present House of Commons. The remedy for this state of 
things is the alternative system of the representation of interests, 
or what is usually described as the representation of minorities, 
though that is only an incidental advantage of its adoption. 
No matter how small a minority may be, it can, under this 
system of representation, secure a voice in the management of 
national affairs, provided that scattered all over the country it 
can count enough votes to obtain a single seat. The number 
requisite for this purpose is of course the quotient obtained by 
dividing the whole number of the electorate by the number of 
seats in the people's house. It is hardly needful to point out 
how many important interests are at the present moment 
utterly disfranchised owing to the accidental fact of their not 
being huddled together within a circumscribed district. The 
retirement of Mr. Leonard Courtney from the Government of 



54 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

which he was a member because of the strength of his convic- 
tions on this point will not be lost upon his countrymen. The 
sixth canon, then, is that interests must be directly represented 
in Parliament, and not mere geographical areas. 

7. The next point to be referred to was one of the points of 
the Charter. All the other points except short Parliaments 
have already been carried ; it relates to the payment of members. 
It is really difficult to see why one class of work is not as 
much entitled to remuneration as any other class of work, pro- 
vided it is useful work. I do not say that in many cases it is 
worth paying for. If it is worth having, it is worth paying for. 
I know we have many members of Parliament whose services 
would be dear at any figure that has ever been suggested as 
a reasonable salary. And this throws some light on the further 
question. Out of what fund should the remuneration come ? 

The objections to payment at all are — first, that it would 
lower the tone of the House to pay the members ; secondly, 
that it is never wise to pay for that which can be had for 
nothing, however useful it may be, as in the case of air and 
water, for example. Kow, the reply to the first objection is 
that we do not want "tone" in Parliament, we want repre- 
sentation. The reply to the second objection is, though it is 
true that we get members of Parliament for nothing, what sort 
of members do we get ? Out of over six hundred and fifty 
persons in the House of Commons how many represent any 
class or interest, except the uninteresting class which is 
nervously ambitious to obtain a seat in Parliament and to keep 
it ? Can honesty, sincerity, and courage be expected of such 
men? 

Prom what fund, then, must remuneration come ? There 
are three possible sources. Prom the rates ? But as a rate- 
payer it would be very much against my grain to be forced to 
contribute towards the support of one who did not represent 
my views ; in other words, to pay for the privilege of being 
misrepresented. If my own candidate got in I should not 
object ; but there must always be a minority, and it is surely 
hard upon the minority to compel it to join in the maintenance 
of one who may be working against their interests. 

It is also suggested that payment should be made out of 



II THE STRUCTURE OF THE STATE 55 

the public treasury. Well, the difficulty here would be to assess 
the value of the services of the several members ; it would cer- 
tainly be absurdly unfair to pay them all equally. To pay the 
same sum to an old, experienced, and tried statesman, and to a 
fledgling squire fresh from college, whose sole claim to the 
confidence of the constituency is his father's wealth and local 
standing, would be about as sensible a proceeding as to pay 
equal sums to the skilled cabinetmaker and the joiner's 
apprentice. The notion is preposterous and ridiculous. And 
yet if members are to be paid out of the public treasury it 
will be necessary to strike an average and pay them all alike, 
about £300 a year, as has been proposed. The services of 
some members may be worth some £3000 a year, and the 
services of others less than threepence. 

The third alternative is that each member should be paid 
by his own constituents ; those who want him should pay for 
him, and those who do not want him should be allowed to 
make a better use of their money. There are two objections 
to this course : the first is that it would be necessary to ascer- 
tain who are his constituents ; and in order to know this it 
would be necessary to repeal the Ballot Act. "We shall come 
to that presently. The second is that the system would be 
tantamount to a tax on the franchise. But this is more in 
appearance than in reality. Payment on either of the other 
two systems amounts to the same thing, except that in these 
cases the tax is compulsory instead of voluntary. Moreover, 
if it is worth a voter's while to have his interests looked to in 
Parliament, he must expect to have to pay something for it. The 
work costs money, and cannot really be got for nothing ; and who 
so fit a person to pay for it as the person who reaps the benefit 
of it ? The last method therefore, namely, payment of mem- 
bers by their constituents, seems to be open to the fewest or 
the least objections. 

8. Let us revert to the question of the Ballot. This again 
is a question for the practical statesman. Personally I am 
strongly in favour of abolishing secret voting as soon as we are 
ripe for open voting ; as soon, that is to say, as every voter 
feels independent, and ceases to stand in dread of undue in- 
direct influence. When practical statesmen see that this condi- 



S6 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

tion is reached, the sooner the Ballot is done away with the 
better. It is a standing admission of serfdom. It is notorious 
that when the Act was passed the Ballot for its own sake had 
not a single friend ; not one who did not admit that it was good 
only as a temporary expedient — the lesser of two evils ; 
and only to be tolerated so long as unfair influence was exer- 
cised over a certain class of the voters. Both Mill and 
Brougham were strongly opposed to it. Surely it is important 
that every man should have the right not only of exercising 
the franchise, but also of doing so openly ; he should not be 
deprived of the pleasure and pride of expressing his convictions, 
of stating on which side he is voting and the grounds of his 
vote, without the fear of any evil consequences before his 
eyes. Truth is infectious. And perhaps the best that can 
be said for the Ballot (except as a temporary expedient) 
is in the words of Cicero, that it gives men an open counten- 
ance, while it cloaks their minds. -^ The eighth rule of repre- 
sentative government is that voting should be open and above 
board. 

9. The duration of Parliaments should be natural and not 
artificial. The old Chartist cry for short Parliaments is no 
longer heard, because we have arrived at a stage at which we 
see that no arbitrary limitation of the length of their duration 
is called for. We have the seven years' rule ; but as a matter 
of fact no Parliaments ever succeed in living out that spell. 
They die a natural death, I suppose, about every five years. In 
America they have a presidential election every four years ; 
whereas here in England we change our President (our Prime 
Minister) practically every five years ; the change being brought 
about naturally instead of artificially. Under the sound 
system of the democracy of the future, no doubt a Parliament 
will die a natural death as soon as it ceases to represent the 
feeling of the country. 

10. One of the strongest arguments against democratic 
government is that drawn from the delay due to divided counsels. 
If in trade, for example, all the shareholders of a joint-stock com- 
pany had to be consulted before the board of directors or the 

1 " Grata populo est Tabella, quae frontes aperit hominum, mentes tegit, dat- 
que earn libertatem ut quid volimt faciant." 



II THE STRUCTURE OF THE STATE 57 

managing director could accept an offer or complete a purchase, 
the whole state of the market would have changed and the trans- 
action would be almost impracticable. So the difficulty and 
delay in settling urgent matters of foreign policy in a Parlia- 
ment of over a thousand members are wellnigh insuperable ; 
the system is suicidal ; and even modified as it now is, it 
places England at a great disadvantage with respect to auto- 
cratically governed states like Eussia and Germany. Whether 
foreign policy could not be altogether removed from the domain 
of party, is a question deserving of all the consideration that 
can be bestowed upon it ; how far such matters might be 
left to a permanent mixed Committee is a question for practi- 
cal statesmen ; but whatever the course eventually adopted may 
be, it is certain that the democracy must learn the lesson taught 
in the industrial arena, namely, the need for an independent 
Executive. I am not going to discuss the interpretation to be 
put upon the existing law by which the prerogative of the 
Executive is supposed to be limited in this country ; I am 
merely insisting on the absolute necessity for specialised 
administration. The Executive must have full power to 
declare war, and perform many other important functions 
without first appealing to Parliament. The function must be 
delegated ; but the delegate must be temporarily independent. 
Freedom to take the initiative, with an obligation to obtain 
indemnity afterwards, will create a sufficient ministerial 
responsibility. 

11. It has been admitted that the democracy is impulsive ; 
this also must be counteracted. All free peoples have spon- 
taneously provided for the mature deliberation of important 
and disputed questions of State. Even in our Courts of 
Justice we find it necessary to guard against haste and insuffi- 
cient examination of the question at issue. We have Courts 
of Appeal. So all free peoples have furnished themselves with 
a Second Chamber which has certain powers of yeto on the 
proposals of the First. Even within the last few years we 
have seen a sudden wave of popular impulse which went nigh to 
sending our armies to the Crimea again. A year later, and 
those who had identified themselves with this impulse were 
swept from office. I am not contending that we have to thank 



58 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

the House of Lords for this, or for averting any other evil 
consequences of popular impulse. Neither do I deny that it 
may have done some good in this way. All I am contending 
for is, that there should be a Second Chamber which should 
have the power of appealing from the First Chamber to the 
people, the verdict of the General Election to be of course final. 
Much evil would thereby be averted, and the only possible harm 
which could come of it would be the delay of a few months in 
passing some useful and popular measure. We must not for- 
get that with a Second Chamber properly constituted there 
would be as great a likelihood of the action of the " senators " 
being in accord with the feeling of the people as of the reverse. 
We must not confound the principle of a Second Chamber 
with the admission of the hereditary principle. Let me again 
insist that there is no particular need for hurry. The change 
is coming of its own accord without any call for violence or 
discontinuity. It is a question for the practical statesman 
to say what gradual reforms in the constitution of the House 
of Lords are required in order to convert it into a suitable 
legislative court of reflection, deliberation, and possibly delay ; 
but by no means of obstruction. 

12. The last canon upon which I propose to lay stress, 
is that democratic government should be worked on the 
system of Party. Party government is the key to steady 
democratic progress. In our Courts of Justice we find it is 
not enough to have a thoroughly pure and indefatigable judge 
to sit down, consider the evidence, and adjudicate accordingly. 
That is not found to be the best system. There is counsel for 
the one side and counsel for the other. In the heat of the 
forensic duel many truths are elicited, many arguments adduced, 
which would be overlooked by the impartial judge ; and the 
result is a nearer approximation to justice than would other- 
wise accrue. The same rule holds good in Parliament. One 
party is counsel for the one side, the other party is counsel for 
the other side, and the country has to judge between them. 
In the heat of party strife not a stone is left unturned, not an 
argument lost sight of, by which the country is enabled to de- 
cide the issue. 

But there is one condition essential to the safe working of 



II THE STRUCTURE OF THE STATE 59 

the party system, and that is that the principle upon which 
the two parties are divided, the distinction upon which the 
classification is based, must be the deepest and most general 
principle underlying all the chief political questions of the hour. 
Tor instance, when the great question of the day was whether 
the government of the country should be carried on by the 
many or the few, when all minor measures were considered 
from the point of view of the effect they would have in putting 
power into the hands of the people ; — in those days Parliament 
and the country were properly divided into two parties called 
Tories and Liberals, of which one consistently advocated all 
measures tending to consolidate the power in the hands of the 
upper classes, and the other as naturally worked and voted in 
the opposite direction. At the present day there is no ques- 
tion of the kind before the country. It has been settled long 
ago. As a political power, Toryism is utterly extinct. So also 
the occupation of the old Liberal party is gone. And yet the 
shells remain in which men aggregate, and the aggregates dub 
themselves Tories and Liberals. There is no vitality in 
them. The only points which members of a party nowadays 
have in common are a party name, personal attachments, 
and in some cases an old political tradition handed down 
from an age when the party cry was something more than a 
shibboleth. 

The question of to-day is. What ought the Government to 
do ? and the flabby and unwholesome condition of public opinion 
on the subject is due to the fact that the opposite views on 
this important point are not represented as they should be by 
two great parties in the State. Whatever the form of the 
Government may be, the question still remains to be answered. 
What are its duties ? Are we to adopt Socialism ? or are we 
to adopt Individualism ? Statesmen must class themselves in 
accordance with their answer to this question. 

If we will but bear these twelve rules or canons of repre- 
sentative government in mind, we shall, I think, find ourselves 
in a position to rebut any of the arguments usually adduced 
against a democratic form of government, although at first 
sight they are, I admit, sufficiently formidable. 



CHAPTEE III 

THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 

When we examine the numerous questions which exercise the 
minds of those who take an intelligent interest in politics, we find 
that they fall into two distinct classes : one class relating to the 
structure or constitution of government ; the other to the func- 
tion or duty of government. These two fundamental questions, 
" What is the State ? " and " What does the State ? " though 
standing clearly apart, are usually confounded and treated 
together. Now, although they may be equally vital, that is no 
reason for assuming that those who agree upon the one point 
must necessarily hold identical views on the other. With 
respect to structure, politicians fall at once into two large and 
nearly equal parties, namely, those who are satisfied with the 
existing constitution just as it is, and those who contend that it 
ought to be more or less modified. Doubtless, the members of 
this latter class differ also among themselves as to the kind and 
amount of change desirable, from the red republican, through 
all shades of radicalism, to the most timid trimmer that adorns 
the Liberal benches. Their opponents are of opinion that 
changes are dangerous, or that at all events, if they must occur, 
it is best to let them come of themselves, and to retard rather 
than hasten them on. This party also contains many shades 
of Toryism, from the old-fashioned worshipper of antiquity, 
who would fain, if possible, reverse the tide of history and undo 
the evil of modern days, to the so-called Liberal- Conservative, 
who deems it wise to bend to circumstances and to float pass- 
ively on the stream, though not to swim with it. 

Turn now to the other great question, "What ought the 



CHAP. Ill THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 6i 

Government, however constituted, to do ? " " What are the A^ 
duties of the State, be it monarchical, republican, or mixed?" 
And here again politicians may be split up into two great 
parties. There are those who maintain the greatest possible 
liberty of the individual citizen compatible with the equal 
liberty of his fellows, and who disapprove, therefore, of all 
meddlesome legislation. They would restrict the functions of l 
the State to the administration of justice, the maintenance of 
order, the defence of the country against foreign antagonism, and ' 
the collection and management of revenue for these purposes ; 
and leave other matters to take care of themselves. On the 
other hand, there are those who believe that a well-organised 
body like the State is, or might be made, the most highly- \ 
efficient machine for the carrying out of many great and noble 1 
schemes for the improvement of the people and the amelioration 
of their lot. Such are the persons who support State education, 
State charities, State museums and galleries. State railways 
and telegraphs. State banks. State post-ofQces, and even State 
censors and spies. Such are the persons who would close the 
public-house at ten o'clock or altogether, and who would convert 
drunkards by force, who would and do force their medical nos- 
trums upon unbelievers, and imprison those who resist. Such 
were the persons who took into the general charge the eternal 
welfare of their fellow-creatures, and founded inquisitions to 
keep them in the right path. All these and a thousand other 
matters say they, can be best regulated and managed by the State. 
Diametrically opposed as these two parties are, and funda- 
mental as the issue between them undoubtedly is, it is a 
remarkable fact that they enjoy at present no distinctive 
appellations ; and it is entirely upon difference of opinion con- 
cerning State structure that the existing party divisions are 
based. Indeed, some persons (even experienced statesmen) 
appear to be so far carried away by zeal for structural 
change or resistance to it, as never to give the equally if not 
more vital question of function a thought. Others, again, care 
little for the form of government so long as it is easy to live 
happily and freely under it — 

" For forms of government let fools contest, 
Whate'er is best administered is best ; " 



62 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

or as the old but less refined saw hath it, " A good horse is 
never a bad colour." 

Men of this stamp have during the last fifty years kept 
themselves in the background. The battle for equality, the 
struggles for parliamentary reform, for a redistribution of seats, 
for extension of the suffrage, for the enfranchisement of women, 
for the reconstruction of the House of Lords, and for the end- 
less other constitutional reforms and changes, must be fought 
out when liberty is not in danger. But the very structural 
changes accomplished since the framing of the first Eeform 
Bill have produced unforeseen effects upon the views of the 
ultimate governing body with respect to the duties of the 
State, which effects have been quickened since some two 
decades ago Mr. Disraeli threw open the floodgates still wider 
to the torrent of democracy. Speaking at the inaugural meet- 
ing of the Liberty and Property Defence League, Mr. Pleydell 
Bouverie, said — 

" One sees proposals of even eminent men nowadays which, by 
looking into the history of this country, you will find are strictly allied 
to the old sumptuary laws, and laws for the regulation of labour, and for 
settling what men are to earn, eat, and drink, which are to be found in 
the statute book four hundred years ago. We thought these notions had been 
exploded as hurtful and foolish, but they are coming to the front again, 
and I think it is due to the fact that a large amount of political power is 
now wielded by the comparatively uneducated and ignorant classes. The 
very mistakes and fallacies which were not recognised to be such by the 
educated classes four hundred years ago, and which influenced their legis- 
lation, are again influencing the classes which have recently acquired 
political power. They are for emulating those old-fashioned Acts of 
Parliament ; unreasonable and impossible expectations are indulged in ; 
and there is a great desire for ridiculous interference by Act of Parliament, 
which will again have to be exploded by the good sense of those who agree 
with the gentlemen here." 

Agitations for constitutional reform in harmony with the 
principle of equality are giving place to agitations for restric- 
tions on the liberty of one class for the benefit of another, and 
the liberty of the individual for the supposed benefit of the 
public. This tendency brings politics home to the doors of those 
who take but a lukewarm interest in the " levelling " process, 
and a very keen interest in their own freedom. 



Ill THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 63 

Before we are competent to define the proper sphere of 
State action with any degree of accuracy we must survey the 
whole field covered by officialism at the present day, in this 
country and in other countries, and in past times. By the use 
of the comparative method we shall possibly be enabled to 
detect permanent tendencies which will guide us in predicting 
the probable limitations of State action among civilised com- 
munities of the future. This work has not yet been done, or 
even begun, and it is needless to say I do not presume to 
attempt it here. At the same time it may be some help to 
those who are seriously considering this most important of all 
political questions of the day, if we cast our eye over the 
province of governmental interference in our own country, and 
point out what substitutes for such action have in the several 
departments been suggested, and how far they are feasible. From 
a condition of tribal socialism Englishmen have taken many 
centuries to attain their present degree of civil liberty, and it 
is admitted that considerable remnants of the old patriarchal 
socialism still remain, and are likely to remain (though possibly 
in diminishing quantities) for many years, decades, and perhaps 
centuries to come. In so far as such socialism is necessary 
because we are not yet ripe for absolute individualism, we are 
bound to regard it as " beneficent socialism." It is none the 
less socialism. It must be understood then that in the follow- 
ing review of existing State interferences I am at present 
offering no opinion on their goodness or badness, but merely 
pointing out the fact. 

Although there is no particular order in which State 
functions need be considered, it may be well to begin with 
those which are admitted by most people to be normal functions, 
and to pass on to those which are condemned by larger and 
larger numbers, till we come to those which even socialists 
would hardly defend. First, then, we find that the State under- 
takes the defence of the country against foreign aggression. It 
maintains at the general expense a costly army and navy. It 
builds forts and ships, and supplies itself with all the require- 
ments in connection therewith. Some persons contend that it 
should not make its own guns and ammunition ; that it should 
not build its own ships, or construct its own military railways. 



64 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

that it should not even erect its own fortifications ; but that it 
should purchase all such things and services from private 
persons under suitable contracts regulated by competition. 
Apart from the defence of the country, the State goes farther, 
it follows the trade of its citizens to the uttermost parts of the 
earth, and for their protection it keeps up lines of communica- 
tion along the water highways. It holds other peoples in 
subjection, partly for their own good, but chiefly for the com- 
mercial advantage of Englishmen. Some persons think that 
traders should be left to take care of themselves, to raise and 
maintain their own armies and fleets, as the East India Com- 
pany did last century. 

The next State function of which the large majority 
approve is the maintenance at home of law and order ; that is 
to say, the defence of every citizen against the aggression of 
other citizens, and the enforcement of promises of a certain 
kind (contracts). With the exception of Anarchists none 
dispute the propriety of this State work. The performance of 
it requires the maintenance of Courts of Justice and an army 
of police. The extent to which the State should go in 'prevent- 
ing crime is keenly disputed. Some, for instance, would 
prohibit the carrying of firearms ; others would allow the 
storing of dynamite in private houses, leaving the consequences 
to private responsibility. Eecourse has been had recently to 
spies and informers ; some consider this bad, others maintain 
that it is defensible. 

The next State function which very few persons deprecate 
is the levying of the necessary means for carrying out the above 
and other Government work. The raising of revenue by some 
kind of taxation is denounced by Mr. Auberon Herbert, but he 
seems on this point to be in a minority of one, though I have 
no wish here to beg the question. 

We now come to matters of State interference which 
excite a considerable amount of opposition — rightly or wrongly. 
The State holds itself responsible for the qualification of 
certain private workers. Persons who wish to practise 
medicine and surgery, to sell drugs, to lend money on pledges, 
to deal in second-hand metals, to sell alcohoHc liquors, tobacco, 
or " game," to plead in the Courts, to mind engines, to carry on 



Ill THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 65 

a variety of other occupations, must satisfy the State that they 
are properly qualified by education or respectability, or both. 
Some think that if the Bar, for example, were thrown open, 
the pubhc would easily judge for itself as to the competency 
of the competitors, just as it now does in spite of the Govern- 
ment certificate. The same argument is applied to medicine. 
Due responsibility for culpable negligence would, it is said, 
suffice. 

And the State carries on many works also on its own 
account. It carries letters and sends telegrams and parcels. 
Some point to the fact that the telephone companies, which 
are private, are much more cheaply worked than the telegraphs, 
and deduce the natural conclusion from the observation. 
Others point to the high charges which private carriers made 
for letter-distributing before the State took up the work and 
claimed the monopoly. But the State examines poetry and 
chooses the best poet as the Laureate. It studies astronomy 
on its own account and appoints an Astronomer Eoyal. It 
undertakes scientific expeditions and (some ten or twenty 
years after) publishes reports of them. It vies with private 
enterprise in its efforts to get to the North Pole. It collects 
pictures and books and objects of antiquarian and scientific 
interest, and stores them in national museums and galleries. 
It keeps up botanical gardens, and also gardens for simple 
recreation. All these things may be regarded as national, and 
not calculated to benefit any particular class of persons at the 
expense of the others. In some quarters it is objected that these 
matters would be attended to by private enterprise if it were 
not for State competition, and better managed. It is pointed 
out that the Polaris Expedition effected more than the British 
Expedition under Captain ITares at less than a tenth of the 
cost ; and that the report of the Challenger is only still very 
far from complete. On the other hand, it is contended that 
no private library can compare in any respect with that of the 
British Museum. Similarly, it is said, that private individuals 
could never have kept such recreation grounds as Hyde Park 
out of the hands of the builders for the good of the public 
health. 

We have surveyed the field of modern State action, and 

F 



66 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

passed in review certain institutions intended to benefit the 
nation as a whole. But beyond these national institutions 
the State undertakes to provide others which benefit one class 
at the expense of the remainder : it maintains local baths and 
wash-houses, free libraries and free or half-free schools, and it 
builds dwelling-houses for certain classes of persons. It is 
contended by the advocates of these State institutions that, 
although one class is primarily benefited, the whole com- 
munity derives indirect advantage from them. Individualists, 
on the other hand, urge that private enterprise will, in the 
absence of Government competition, supply enough to meet 
the demand, and that more than this is detrimental to the 
public welfare. It is also said that the quality of the supply 
is thus stereotyped and private initiative crippled. The State 
is asked by some to distribute the population in accordance 
with the fertility of the soil and the production of the district, 
by what is called State emigration or State-aided colonisation. 
This is strongly opposed by the majority, which maintains that 
population distributes itself most economically when left to 
itself But the same majority approves of so distributing 
wealth that those who have shall contribute something towards 
the maintenance of the utterly destitute. Some contend that 
the levying of a poor-rate is in response to a legal and moral 
claim on the part of the poorest section of the community 
— a right to live. Others say it is a tribute to the national 
sentiment, the offspring of pity, and in the same category with 
the laws against cruelty to animals ; while others again defend 
the poor law as a safety-valve against revolution, and without 
any other justification. Again the question has been keenly 
debated whether the State is warranted in stepping in between 
a citizen and his own animals in the interest of humanity. 
Some say these matters may safely be left to the social 
sanction. 

Other State interferences may be classified under the 
heads of Sanitation, Morality, Eeligion, and Justice. Whether 
individuals should be allowed to dispose of their sewage as 
they think fit, or should be compelled to adopt some general 
and approved system ; whether they should be forced to adopt 
certain medical precautions in the general interest, such as those 



Ill THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 67 

required by quarantine laws, Vaccination Acts, Contagious 
Diseases Acts, notification and compulsory removal laws and 
the like ; whether they should be allowed to build according 
to demand, or according to rules like those contained in the 
Metropolitan Buildings Acts ; whether such matters as smoke- 
abatement should be treated as questions of mere private 
nuisance ; whether the dead should be disposed of according 
to the fancies of their surviving relations, or on some State- 
ordained system ; whether private persons should be permitted 
to use and also to abuse public waters by polluting them until 
such time as they see the necessity of combining to keep them 
pure ; whether the makers and vendors, of foods, drugs, bever- 
ages, etc., should be untrammelled by any other law than the 
maxim caveat emptor, or whether the State should analyse 
these commodities and punish adulterators ; upon all these 
questions of sanitation, and a hundred others of the same kind, 
opinions differ. 

In the interests of Morality some contend (an enormous 
majority) that the State should punish bigamy and practices 
inimical to monogamy, and should prescribe between whom 
marriages should lawfully be sanctioned. Some of those who 
admit this, contend that the State is needlessly strict in its 
prohibitions, e.g. in the case of marriage with the sister of a 
deceased wife. Some of those who would allow young girls, 
against their inclinations, to be sacrificed to the greed or 
ambition of parents or guardians, provided the contract is one 
of marriage, deny the sufficiency of parental responsibility in 
the case of similar contracts of a temporary character, even 
when the young person is a consenting party. Opinions 
widely differ as to how far the State is warranted in sharing 
the responsibility with parents, and in standing in loco parentis 
with respect to orphans. It is also debated whether the 
suppression of brothels other than disorderly houses is, properly 
speaking, a State duty; and the same difference extends to 
the question of public-houses, where drunkenness may (or may 
not) result in disorder and nuisance. In the interest of morality 
the State exercises censorship of plays, though it has not till 
the other day been deemed necessary to continue the pre- 
caution in the case of light literature. In the matter of 



68 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap, 

gambling, opinions widely differ, and the State seems to comply 
with them all. It prohibits some kinds of betting and lotteries 
under heavy penalties. Other kinds, snch as betting on race- 
courses, it tolerates, but refuses to sanction ; and other kinds, 
again, it recognises and sanctions, such as Stock Exchange 
speculations. Probably it may be said that according to the 
spirit of Scotch jurisprudence a fair bet should be enforced 
like any other contract, whereas English law would consistently 
refuse to sanction it. As to which is the best course for the 
State to adopt, having regard to the general welfare, opinions 
again differ. 

Coming to State action in the interest of Eeligion, there 
is great diversity of view. The tendency has clearly been 
in the direction of diminished Government interference in such 
matters. People are no longer burned for heresy. Whether 
heretics should be burnt is still a debated question, but the 
"Noes" have it. N'ot so, however, with regard to Sabbath 
observance, Sunday trading, Sunday amusements, etc. On 
these points, and on the maintenance of a Church Estab- 
lishment, public opinion seems to be pretty evenly balanced. 
There still remain on the Statute-books certain laws relating 
to oaths, and others relating to blasphemy, which imply that 
the State considers itself bound to punish offences against 
what may be called the national religion. 

In this very brief survey of existing State functions in 
England we have necessarily omitted all reference to whole 
classes of Government action, and notably to that coming 
under the head Justice. And we have passed over the whole 
field of municipal functions, such as road-making, maintaining, 
paving, and cleaning ; lighting, bridge-building ; the laying of 
sewers and drains, water supply, fire extinction, the regulation 
of cemeteries, markets, and fairs, etc. etc. In spite of all these 
omissions the area surveyed is wide enough to call up doubts 
in the minds of both parties — Individualists and Socialists — 
as to whether the happy mean has in all cases been yet hit by 
the State. 

The spirit of the individualist movement is one of resistance 
to any overstepping by the legislature of its normal boundaries. 
It is the embodiment of the absolute principle of civil liberty, 



Ill THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 69 

or the greatest possible liberty of each, compatible with the 
equal liberty of all. Of those who have faith in State action 
it is probable that none follow up the principle to its extreme 
logical conclusion, and look forward to the time when every 
man in the land shall have his own inspector to follow him 
about, to carry his goloshes, and to see that he puts them on 
before crossing the road ; to take notes of what he says ; to 
correct his grammar and his religious opinions when out of 
harmony with authorised usage ; to see that he drinks what 
is good for him, and no more ; to put out his candle at nine 
at night, and to accompany him twice to church every Sunday. 
Consistency wavers before such a prospect — an age when there 
shall be no crime, no drunkenness, no wrangling, not even 
difference of opinion, and we shall be an orderly people, doing 
that which is right in the eyes of the majority — the supreme, 
allwise, and serenely disinterested majority ! But if the State 
socialists shrink from this outcome of State idolatry, so also 
do their opponents shrink from carrying the principle of 
non-interference to extreme lengths. Probably if they are 
prepared to accept any working principle at all as to the 
expediency of any proposed legislation, it is that the onus 
probandi lies on those who would limit the freedom of the 
citizen. "The old-fashioned presumption was always that in 
the case of any interference with liberty, its reasonableness 
should be demonstrated before it should be adopted ; but 
nowadays it seems to be the notion that the presumption is 
the other way, and the burden of proof is on those who have 
to defend liberty instead of on those who insist upon inter- 
ference." Yes, till the sweets of bondage are proved, it is 
better to remain free. 

The need for such a movement was never more urgent than 
it is to-day, for, blink the matter as we may, there is no 
denying that a new departure has of late been made by the 
Conservative party, the outcome of which it is impossible to 
foresee. In an apparent bid for socialist support, opposed 
though it is to Conservative traditions and practice, there is 
nothing actually inconsistent with Conservative theory. Be 
this as it may, the die is cast. The Conservative party have 
thrown in their lot with State socialism. The gloomy and 



70 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

unheeded forebodings of Lord Wemyss, in 1883, are already 
fulfilled. 

"Whereas in commerce freedom of contract is the very breath of its 
nostrils, the soul of its being ; and whereas the commercial transactions 
in land — that is, the bargains between landlord and tenant — are in the 
aggregate greater than those of any two or three of the other largest 
British commercial interests ; these bargains are not only to be forbidden 
in the future, but broken in the past. This is what the two great 
parties in the State afl&rmed when, with grateful hearts and cheerful 
countenances, they with delightful unanimity passed the second reading 
of the Government Agricultural Holdings Bill. Contracts, not in ' ex- 
ceptional ' Ireland, but here in law-abiding, free, commercial England 
and Scotland — forbidden in the future and broken in the past ! And 
why ? Solely because — disguise the truth as they may under specious 
phrases, bury it no matter how deep under agricultural commissioners' 
reports — Liberals and Conservatives have cast principle and sound 
economic doctrine aside, and are playing a game of grab for the farmers' 
vote." 

The result of the game will, of course, depend on the 
answer to the question, Who holds the trump card ? And 
the trump card is not nationalisation of land only, but 
nationalisation of all wealth. That is the trump card in the 
game. Hitherto, the part of the Conservative has been to 
throw obstacles in the path of the Eadical charioteer, while 
the Whig has taken his seat on the box and hampered the 
driver's movements, endeavouring all the while to damp his 
ardour with prudent counsel. It now remains to be seen 
whether the old party of progress with liberty can any longer 
continue to play the role of unheeded mentor to the new party 
of communism and spoliation. If those Liberals who, anxious 
not to impede the process of structural reform, have up to the 
present silently tolerated much over-legislation of which they 
secretly disapprove, rather than seem to join hands with those 
who would bolster up effete institutions, do not now come 
forward and speak out boldly for the ancient rights and 
liberties of all classes on the time-honoured lines of property 
and freedom, to whom shall the country look ? 

Now that the masses have tasted power they will strive 
for more, and it will be a wise precaution to guard democracy 
from its own defects by limiting the powers of the State, however 
constituted, and to enact, while yet it is day, that all inter- 



Ill THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 71 

ference of Government in matters outside its normal duties 
shall be a violation of the constitution. So long as the people 
see us arbitrarily shutting up their clubs, while our own are 
left open ; forcing their children to learn w^hat we were taught 
instead of what their fathers were taught, namely, their handi- 
craft ; closing their places of business on specified days ; taxing 
them for the support of our museums, picture galleries, and scien- 
tific expeditions ; in fine, acting as though by our mere fiat we 
could shower luxuries upon them or doom them to starvation 
— is it very wonderful they should wish to wield this power 
which can effect so much for good or for evil ? If, ask they, 
we can reduce their working hours to ten, why not to eight ? 
If we can build schools for their children, why not cottages 
for them ? If we can afford to protect them gratis from small- 
pox, why cannot we pay the doctor's bill when they do catch 
it ? Naturally they argue that capital is better paid than 
labour, because the labourer is not well represented in the 
House of Commons, and not at all in the House of Lords. When 
they obtain the reins, then, say they, it will be the labourer's 
turn. And who shall blame them ? They are only taking a 
leaf out of our book. It cannot be honestly denied that re- 
course has been had to class legislation for the benefit of the 
upper classes at the expense of the lower. Have not wages 
been kept down by law ? Has not the price of bread been 
kept up by law for the benefit of a class ? What have ship- 
owners to say about the old navigation laws ? But it is not 
necessary to assign instances when there are hundreds in the 
recollection of all. Something more than mortal, then, will 
these new masters be, if, for any nobler motive than en- 
lightened self-interest, they can be induced, with victory within 
their grasp, to forego the luxury of revenge and the plunder 
of their quondam taskmasters. 

Nor can we lay the blame of this evil example of over- 
legislation at the door of either party in the State. Both are 
alike culpable, though, for reasons which are apparent, the 
Eadical party chiefly has been made the tool of the rising 
socialism. Unless, therefore, it can be shown to the satisfaction 
of the working classes that class legislation worked in their 
own interest cannot in the long run be of advantage to them. 



72 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

but rather the reverse, we must prejDare for a long period of 
sullen uniformity and mob despotism, such as has never been 
known before. And yet individualism has no easy task before 
it. The enemy is overwhelming in numbers and strongly 
entrenched. "With the old Anglo-Saxon love of liberty and 
self-dependence on the one side ; ranged against it are the not 
yet extinct class hatred, a thirst for retaliation, and, above and 
before all, sympathy with suffering. Not that it is necessary 
to overcome the sympathy, but to convince those who sym- 
pathise, that the best medicine for all social ills is liberty ; 
optima medicina est non uti medicina. This is in many cases 
no light matter. Try and convince the recipient of outdoor 
relief that such relief is inexpedient. Have you seen whole 
families during the famines in Ireland or India literally starving 
to death on land from which its owner or usufructuary draws 
thousands a year ? Demonstrate to them that it would be 
neither wise nor kind to abolish by law the payment of rent. 
Have you hopelessly watched a crew of stalwart fellows go 
down on some rotten craft within sight of port ? Convince 
Mr. PlimsoU, and those who think with him, that the sea- 
worthiness of ships is best left to the shipowners. Have you 
known little children of nine and ten sent down into the pit 
to toil in solitude, in danger, and in darkness for the livelong 
day ? If so, are you sure that the law relating to mines and 
prohibiting such cruelty is altogether unjustifiable ? Is it 
true that £80,000,000 is anually spent in intoxicating drink 
in this country ? If so, shall we blame those who would do 
their utmost, by legislation, to extirpate the national curse ? 
Again, it is not pleasant to see the little ones of the people 
growing up in ignorance of much that is useful and beautiful 
for the want of elementary teaching. Surely men will not be 
found capable of banding themselves together for the express 
purpose of resisting all these noble efforts for the amelioration 
of poverty and weakness. 

Now this question brings us to the remarkable misconcep- 
tion that has somehow got afloat as to the views of individual- 
ists with respect to rules and regulations in general. It seems 
to be supposed that anything of the nature of a rule is in their 
eyes anathema. The Eadical papers teem with questions 



Ill THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE -jt, 

calculated to bring ridicule upon those who oppose State 
interference in general. It seems to be forgotten that other 
bodies can make laws besides the State. The Stock Exchange 
and the Jockey Club at once present themselves as instances 
of private bodies making laws which are virtually accepted by 
the whole country. The customs of the Lancashire cotton 
trade are the finest example of commercial law in the world. 
Every club, every society and association, makes its own laws, 
which are sufficiently sanctioned to meet with respect and 
obedience, quite as uniformly as the laws of the land. And 
yet the prevailing impression seems to be that only the State 
can make laws having any binding effect — that without such 
State rules and regulations everything would be topsy-turvy. 
Mine-owners and miners would conspire to blow up the mines ; 
shipowners would scuttle their ships, drown their crews, get 
up a glorious reputation for going to the bottom, and pay 
double insurance ; cabmen would charge at least a guinea a 
mile ; bankers would smother the country with worthless 
paper ; railway companies would smash up passengers and 
goods, charge prohibitive fares, and ruin their shareholders ; 
theatrical managers would drive all the respectable and monied 
classes away from the theatres by exhibitions of bad taste ; 
publicans would sit up all night in order to sell a pint of ale ; 
pawnbrokers would charge 60 per cent a month, and receive 
stolen goods with alacrity ; landlords would keep their farms 
unlet and uncultivated; farmers would pay more in rent 
than they could recoup in profit; and everybody would 
work to death without taking a holiday ; in fine, society is 
accredited with suicidal mania and must be kept in a strait- 
waistcoat. 

The first question asked is, " What ! would you allow a 
thoughtless collier to light his pipe in the workings ? " or, 
"Would you let the railway companies charge what they 
like ? " or, " Would you have all the land thrown out of 
cultivation ? " or, " Would you have all the crops devoured by 
vermin ? " or something equally irrelevant. Now the answer 
to all these and similar questions is, that it is not the ex- 
pediency or appropriateness of this or that regulation with 
which individualism concerns itself. It may be an excellent 



74 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

provision that passenger trains should not run at more than 
sixty miles an hour, or it may not ; if it is, let the companies 
make such a rule, or let the public refrain from travelling by 
lines which have no such rule ; but let not Parliament inter- 
fere in the matter. Again, as to the naked lights in a coal- 
pit, is it really believed that colliers are so absurdly reckless 
of their own lives as to imperil them for the sake of a whiff 
of tobacco ? And even granting that there are a few such 
dangerous lunatics in the pits, as out of them, is the mine- 
owner so anxious himself for a meeting with his creditors as 
to allow such doings if they can possibly be prevented ? The 
plain fact is, apart from theory, that before the passing of any 
Acts relating to mines, the most stringent regulations were in 
force concerning the use of lights and lamps in the workings 
— rules not so much imposed by the masters, as agreed to 
alike by owners, managers, and men, for the common safety. 
It is the ability to make such rules, to obey them, and to 
enforce them, which makes the Anglo-Saxon race what it is — a 
colonising people, a people fit for self-government. And it is 
the weakening and supplanting of these contractual rules by 
rules emanating from a central legislature which will some day, 
if persisted in, reduce the Englishman to the level of his con- 
tinental neighbours. It is not from any horror of law and 
order, of method and regulation in all things, that individualism 
is opposed to State interference ; on the contrary, it is rather 
the reverse ; it is because it attaches so high a value to these 
things, and because it fears to see the habits of self-rule 
crushed out by the enervating effects of grandmotherly govern- 
ment. 

In one respect there is no comparison at all between the 
contractual regulations made by those chiefly interested and 
the State regulations made, so to speak, by outsiders ; and 
that is, in point of economy, the true balance of advantage. 
It is doubtless more or less dangerous to go into a pit at all ; 
but a law to prohibit coal-mining would be to sacrifice too 
much for the sake of safety. Again, a safety lamp costs more 
than a naked candle ; but to tolerate the candle would be to 
sacrifice too little for the sake of safety. There is always a 
happy medium, and the legislature is not likely to find it. 



THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 



75 



Take shipping — seaworthiness is a matter of degree ; if 
absolute, unquestionable seaworthiness is insisted upon, the 
lower-class seaman is ruined ; if the cranky craft is allowed, 
foul deeds for the sake of insurance are rendered possible. 
Where the line should be drawn is a nice question, and must 
be settled between the shipowner and the sailor ; it certainly 
cannot be settled by the State without the certainty of a false 
economy. " To the seafaring population," writes Mr. Crofts, 
"the character of each ship and ship's captain are as well 
known as the performances of every racehorse to the betting 
fraternity. If a sailor takes employment on a rotten and 
overladen ship, with a drunken skipper, to whom astronomical 
reckonings are as G-reek, it is in most cases not because he 
does not know any better, but because he cannot do any better. 
Able-bodied seamen with good recommendations and habits 
naturally monopolise the forecastles of the best ships, where 
bad characters and Lascars are at a discount. If these latter 
want to go to sea, their evil reputation does not permit of 
their being over-fastidious in the choice of accommodation and 
masters ; and the question for them is frequently one of going 
afloat with a chance of living, or staying ashore with a certainty 
of starving." 

I have no desire to impugn the motives of those simple- 
minded philanthropists, who, filled with sympathy for suffering 
humanity, struggle to mitigate the laws of nature by Act of 
Parliament. It is not with these men we need quarrel ; they 
are possibly intelligent men of little knowledge, and open to 
conviction when the truth is stated to them simply ; but it is 
their subtler allies that are to be feared, imposters who trade 
on the nobler instincts of their fellow-workers for the sake of 
place, popularity, or pelf Such men are beneath conviction ; 
frequently they know the futility of their own proposals, but it 
suits them to pose as philanthropists. Let us name no names, 
but there are well-known legislators who speak with unction 
of the rights and wrongs of labour, and who grind down their 
own work-people with an iron heel. There is such a thing as 
Brummagem philanthropy ; these are the impostors who form 
the extreme sect of what Mr. Gladstone once called " Political 
quacks." 



76 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

But the lovers of civil liberty are not without questionable 
allies, men who are open to the charge of protesting against 
State interference with the industry in which they are them- 
selves interested, lest such interference should favour their 
weaker fellow- workers. When we see men whose whole political 
lives have been spent in plotting against the liberties of the 
people, suddenly cry out for liberty, more liberty, as soon as 
their own pockets are threatened, we may know how far to 
trust such men, and what their alliance is worth. Poor Jack 
must not be allowed to drink rum ; it is bad for him physically 
and morally, but he may drown, for am I not a shipowner ? 
The wretched miner must be wrapped up in cotton wool and 
work no more than four hours a day, but as for the peasant he 
may rot on my threshold, for am I not a landlord ? Let the 
poverty-stricken be defended against the rapacity of the 
merciless pawnbroker ; but it is preposterous to tolerate the 
claim of the helpless widow and children whom a railway 
accident has left destitute, for be it known that I am a railway 
king. One can hardly blame those demagogues who stigmatise 
individualism as selfishness. Sympathy with suffering quickens 
the zeal of these scribblers for quixotic legislation, while their 
knowledge of political philosophy is too defective to permit of 
their seeing its futility. 

It is unfortunately too true that a consistent individualist 
must combine knowledge of principles and the courage of his 
opinions with a certain surgeon-like imperturbability in the 
presence of the inevitable : he must know how to withhold the 
iced drink from the parched fever patient ; he must be prepared 
to be accused of selfishness and greed, of hardness of heart and 
indifference to the sufferings of others, and of hypocrisy in 
appealing to the lofty principles of liberty for the sinister 
purpose of bolstering up unjust privileges and monopolies. 
These charges must be met and disproved, not only in general 
but in detail. 

Between socialism and liberalism there is no necessary 
bond, neither, as we shall see, is conservatism uniformly 
individualistic. After passing in view some of the more 
prominent pieces of proposed legislation of a semi-socialistic 
character, which are even now within the range of practical 



Ill THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 77 

politics, judged by the rate at which we have been travelling of 
late in this direction, Mr. Fawcett concluded one of his latest 
pamphlets in these remarkable words : " In endeavouring to 
explain some of the consequences which their adoption would 
involve, we should greatly regret to do any injustice to the 
motives of those by whom they are advocated. Mischievous as 
we believe many of these schemes would prove to be, the great 
majority of those by whom they are advocated are undoubtedly 
prompted by no other desire than to promote social, moral, and 
material advancement. The conclusion above all others which 
we desire to enforce is, that any scheme, however well-inten- 
tioned it may be, will indefinitely increase every evil it seeks 
to alleviate if it lessens individual responsibility by encouraging 
the people to rely less upon themselves and more upon the 
State." 

Again, Mr. Thorold Eogers, in a lecture on " Some Aspects 
of Laissez-faire and Control," has treated the question his- 
torically. But, as he will himself admit, the trustworthiness 
of the results of a study of tendencies to a very great extent 
depends on the length of time during which those tendencies 
can be shown to have been in operation. Mr. Eogers's con- 
clusion that the general consensus is distinctly favourable 
to increased State interference is probably correct for the 
present time, and it coincides with what has been already 
said about the recent rapid advance of State socialism ; but 
to infer from proof of such present tendency that increased 
Government action is a concomitant of civilisation would or 
would not be justifiable according as the tendency can be 
shown to be a persistent (one, or at least an increasing one 
throughout the whole range of history. Any shorter period of 
observation is apt to be delusive ; the present prevalence of 
socialistic opinions in this and other countries can no more be 
pointed to as part of a universal development than could 
the equally remarkable advance of the extreme doctrine of 
" let-be " thirty or forty years ago. Almost as philosophically 
might the marked revival of that doctrine during a recent 
period in England be cited in support of the doctrine of 
individualism. Now, if we take English constitutional his- 
tory as the subject of our examination, we shall find that 



78 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

SO far from being on the increase, State interference with 
individual liberty has been a constantly-diminishing quantity. 
We have but to cast our eyes down the statutes of the 
Plantagenet period to discover in what numberless private 
concerns the State intruded, with which no modern Government 
would dream of meddling. The price of corn, the wages of 
labourers, the importation of coin, the manufacture of beer, the 
rate of interest on loans, attendance at divine service, and a 
thousand other matters, were carefully supervised by the State. 
A statute of Henry VIII. goes so far as to forbid the use of 
machinery in the manufacture of broadcloth, a law which drove 
a good deal of the woollen trade to Holland, where the "divers 
devilish contrivances " were under no ban. Why, there are 
actually early English laws setting forth with what amount of 
energy and thoroughness the ploughman shall plough each 
furrow. Further illustrations are unnecessary, for it will be 
admitted by any candid reader of history that, on the whole, 
the tendency to State interference diminishes with the evolution 
of societies. The slight reaction observable in our own day seems 
to be satisfactorily explained by the sudden inclusion within the 
electorate of two new layers of citizens with limited political 
experience. The evil will disappear only when the newly- 
enfranchised classes perceive not only that they will themselves 
suffer from restrictions on free action, but that they will be the 
first and the worst sufferers. When Mr. Eogers descends to the 
particular instances of what may be called modern socialistic 
legislation, he seems to be anxious and able to find some 
special justification for each in its turn. Mr. Eogers is quite 
incapable of prostituting science to the defence of party, 
and yet any one might be forgiven for thinking otherwise 
to whom Mr. Kogers's writings were previously unknown. 
The Factory Acts are good, he says, because they result in 
the restraint of waste. It might easily be shown that the 
economy of labour has been indefinitely postponed by the 
operation of the Factory Acts. " The doctrine of laissez- 
faire is absolute in the case of contracts for the use of 
labour, exce'pt in cases where — " and then comes a string 
of exceptions apparently cast in general language for the 
purpose of justifying the Acts just named, the Truck Acts, 



ni THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 79 

the Act of 1883 for prohibiting the payment of wages in 
public-houses, and other similar interferences with individual 
freedom. 

I am not going to defend the tally-shop, though many 
a poor wife has cursed the day since when her husband's 
wages, instead of being paid in groceries and household stores, 
were paid in cash to be spent in drink. What is of more im- 
portance to note is, that where workmen as a class were thrifty 
and steady, as in the mining districts of Durham and Nor- 
thumberland, the truck system died a natural death without 
any need for State intervention. Similarly, the fishermen in 
several of the east-coast ports have put a stop to the system of 
paying wages in the public-house in a very simple manner ; by 
steadily refusing to order liquor, or even to drink it at the ex- 
pense of another, they have made it unprofitable to the publican 
to give the use of his premises for the purpose. Men who have 
not the strength of mind to act thus will not be made more 
self-reliant or more fit to wrestle with the many temptations 
of the world by being put into leading-strings and kept out of 
sight of beer. With respect to the free choice of a calling, 
Mr. Eogers agrees " that the aggregate of industry sorts itself 
best in the interests of all when the process is left to perfectly 
free action." But this excellent generalisation goes too far for 
him ; it condemns much recent legislation ; consequently a 
qualifying clause must be introduced to justify it, so that the 
rule now reads, " The aggregate of industry sorts itself best in 
the interest of all when, certain obvious conditions being satisfied, 
and precautions taken, the process is left to perfectly free 
action." One of these precautions seems to be the State 
examination of everybody in order that "adequate evidence 
should be given of professional competence." " The impulse," 
says Mr. Eogers, " is towards the creation of new professions 
with special tests of proficiency ; this is the case with the art 
of the dispensing druggist, of the surveyor, of the elementary 
schoolmaster," and he might have added, of the skipper and 
second hand of fishing-boats. The enforcement of professional 
responsibility by law is a totally distinct question, and rests on 
the answer given to a deeper question than that concern- 
ing the demarkation of State functions. When we come 



8o INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

to the railways, Mr. Eogers seems to have some difficulty 
in finding any sound or even specious reason for making 
them an exception to the general rule. "The case of 
these adventurers is most peculiar," he says. " The directors 
and shareholders of the existing companies vote in Parlia- 
ment against rival lines without pretending to consider the 
public good." I believe the brewers as a class do not 
support local -option bills ; it is hinted that the bishops 
are somewhat biassed in favour of the Established Church ; 
and landowners are not always agitating for a heavy land- 
tax ; but the charge against the railway directors appears 
to be, not so much that they consider the interests of 
their own class first, after the manner of others, but that they 
have not the decency to pretend to put the interests of plas- 
terers, tanners, physicians, etc. etc., before their own. So the 
railways are to be brought under increased State control, the 
so-called Cheap Trains Act is only an instalment in the direc- 
tion of this control. Eeasons are also forthcoming for the 
violation of the " let-be " principle in the matter of agricultural 
holdings, of homes for the poor, of places of entertainment 
and refreshment, of education, and of sanitary arrangements. 
With respect to education, Mr. Eogers is candid enough and 
paradoxical enough to admit that " it is of no material or 
economical benefit to the recipient , " and since we force it 
upon others solely for our own benefit, at some loss and in- 
convenience to themselves, we have no right to charge them 
anything for it. Many people will agree that if education is 
to be compulsory, it should certainly be free, but they will 
underline the word "if." 

But conservatism also dallies with socialism. 

" Some persons," writes Lord Salisbury, on the subject of artisans' 
dwellings, " may be disposed to inquire at the outset whether it is right that 
Parliament should interfere at all. I see a statement in the newspaper that 
the Liberty and Property Defence League are preparing to denounce any such 
interference as unsound in principle. I have the greatest respect for the 
League. They preach a wholesome doctrine, and necessary for these times. 
But if this account of their views is a true one, I think they have in this in- 
stance gone farther than sound reasoning and ih^ 'pre,cedent8 of our legislation 
will justify. At present no proposal has been made, as far as I know, to give 
assistance for this purpose except by way of loan, and surely it cannot be 
maintained that loans for public objects are against the practice of this 



Ill THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 8i 

country because their first effects may be to promote the interest of in- 
dividuals. "Without entering upon disputable ground by quoting Ireland 
and the West Indies, it is sufficient to recall the advances made by 
various Governments, but especially by that of Sir Kobert Peel, for the 
extension of drainage in this country. A very large sum was advanced 
to landlords at an interest which secured the State from loss, but lower 
than their own credit would have obtained. It was duly paid after 
having done its work. That work was in the first instance to increase 
the rental of the land, and, in the second, undoubtedly it served the use- 
ful purpose of giving employment under the agricultural depression caused 
by the repeal of the corn-laws, and of increasing the general production 
of the country. In the case before us also the loan would be justified by 
imperious considerations of public policy, even if all thoughts of humanity 
were cast aside. These overcrowded centres of population are also centres 
of disease, and successive discoveries of biologists tell us more and more 
clearly that there is in this matter an indissoluble partnership among all 
human beings breathing in the same vicinity. If the causes of disease 
were inanimate, no one would hesitate about employing advances of public 
money to render them innocuous. Why should the expenditure become 
illegitimate because the causes happen to be human beings ? But this 
unhappy population has a special claim on any assistance that Parliament 
can give. The evil has in a great measure been created by Parliament 
itself. If London had been allowed to go on as it was half a century ago, 
many benefits of vast importance would have been lost, but the intense 
competition for house room would not exist and the reformation of 
' rookeries ' would have been a much less arduous task. But improve- 
ments on a vast scale have been made, and those improvements in too 
many cases have only meant packing the people tighter. New streets, 
railways, viaducts, law courts and other public buildings, made compulsory 
under the authority of Parliament, have swept away the dwellings of thou- 
sands of the poor, and in that proportion have made the competition more 
intense for those that remain. Many tenements have let for a high price, 
which, if artificial compression had not been used, would have found no 
tenant. Under these circumstances it is no violation, even of the most 
scrupulous principles, to ask Parliament to give what relief it can. 
Laissez-faire is an admirable doctrine, but it must be applied upon both 
sides." 

Whether loans for public objects are, or are not, against 
the fradice, of this country is hardly relevant when we are 
discussing the wisdom of the plan. This country, like most 
other countries, is occasionally guilty of foolish practices, and 
what we want to know is, not what the State has been in the 
habit of doing in the past but what it ought to do in the 
future. As to the advances made under Sir Eobert Peel to 
landlords for drainage purposes at a lower rate of interest than 

G 



82 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

their own credit would have obtained, the question is, Was 
this effected without loss to the country ? That the State was 
duly repaid with interest in full may be quite true, and yet 
the country may have lost heavily by the transaction. The 
interest on State loans has to be paid for out of taxation ; and 
the question is. Would the money intercepted by the State for 
these purposes have found its way into more remunerative 
channels than the three per cents or not ? And in any case, 
would the wealth so intercepted have fructified at a greater 
rate in the hands of the people than on the fields of the land- 
lords ? There is at least this to be said, the capital which is 
invested by the private enterprise of the people does, as a fact, 
on the average realise over three per cent per annum, whereas 
the investment on drainage was after all nothing less than a 
speculation which was justified only by success. It might 
have been a colossal failure. Perhaps the worst that can be 
said of this speculation is, that its good luck has elevated it 
into a very dangerous precedent. The amount of risk involved 
in it was accurately measured by the interest which the land- 
lords would have had to pay if they had borrowed the money 
on their own credit. " If," said the late Mr. Fawcett, " the 
State makes loans in cases where they cannot be obtained 
from ordinary commercial sources, it is clear that, in the 
judgment of those best qualified to form an opinion, the 
State is running a risk of loss." As to the useful purposes 
of giving employment, could a more dangerous doctrine be 
formulated ? 

Lord Salisbury's chief argument for State interference in 
this direction is based on a complete misapprehension of the 
position of the " let-be " school. It amounts in effect to this. 
These London slums are foci of pestilence ; if similar dangers 
were due solely to inanimate causes, you would not hesitate to 
spend the public money in their prompt removal. Why, then, 
should you refrain from doing so merely lest one wretched 
class of the community should be accidentally benefited at the 
expense of the remainder ? Why, indeed ? But that is not 
the reason for objecting to the expenditure. Lord Salisbury is 
mistaken when he says "that no one would hesitate if the 
causes of disease were inanimate." They would and do 



Ill THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 83 

hesitate ; tliey strongly protest. But their reason is the most 
profound distrust in the efficiency of State machinery for these 
and all similar purposes — absolute disbelief in the power of 
the State to effect the desired object. There is no doubt 
whatever that Parliament has already done much in the way 
of aggravating the evil, and in making " improvements which 
in too many cases have only meant packing the people tighter." 
Therefore, although it may be "no violation of the most 
scrupulous principles to ask Parliament to give what relief it 
can," it is nevertheless permissible to doubt if Parliament can 
give any, and to protest against throwing good money after 
bad. The problem to be solved is. How to build and fit out a 
£75 tenement for £30 or £40; and we have only to look 
deep enough into all the schemes propounded with a view to 
its solution to find that the key to every one of them is 
plunder more or less disguised. The promoters of the urban 
scheme would continue to compel the ratepayers to buy land 
at a guinea a foot, and to sell it to the philanthropists for five 
shillings. The friends of the suburban scheme have more 
respect for the pockets of the ratepayers ; they would organise 
" a system of cheap trains " ; in other words, they would compel 
the railway companies to carry certain classes of passengers at 
a dead loss. Whether this is done after the manner of Dick 
Turpin, or on the model of the so-called Cheap Trains Act 
matters little. Whether shareholders are to be robbed in the 
old-fashioned style, or tricked out of their rights by a dishonest 
Act of Parliament, is a question for those whose policy is 
spoliation with decency. The passenger duty has been con- 
demned by all parties on grounds of justice and expediency, 
and the companies had been given distinctly to understand 
that the tax would be abolished as soon as the state of the 
revenue justified the sacrifice. On the faith of this under- 
standing the companies refrained from further agitation in the 
matter, until they were informed that they were at last to 
receive part of their admitted rights on condition of their 
carrying a certain class of persons over their lines at an un- 
remunerative rate. There are many other schemes before the 
public, but of this we may rest assured, that plunder underlies 
them all. If anything was wanted to demonstrate the utter 



84 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

hopelessness of any attempt to improve the dweUings of the 
poor by State help, that want was met by Lord Salisbury's 
own very able analysis of the position. The difficulty to be 
overcome is summed up in these words, " Until their wages 
rise they cannot pay for the bare cost of decent lodging such 
as existing agencies can offer." 

Lord Pembroke's pamphlet on "Liberty and Socialism" 
begins with an analysis of the causes which have led to the 
rapid decline in popular favour of the doctrine of laissez-faire 
during the last two or three decades. " A few years ago the 
doctrine of non-interference seemed to be paramt)unt in English 
politics, and any one who ventured to prophesy that there 
would be a reversal of public opinion before the end of the 
century was ridiculed as a crotcheteer and an alarmist." And 
yet only recently the Times is found .maintaining that " the 
doctrine of laissez-faire is as dead as the worship of Osiris." 
"Among other things that helped to bring about the reaction," 
says Lord Pembroke, " was the fact that it had been an era of 
continual political reform. Laws and institutions that the 
country had outgrown had to be removed ; restrictions that 
our wiser knowledge had shown us the folly of had to be 
swept away. One would hardly have supposed that this 
process could have been favourable to a belief in the efficacy 
of interference. But, however strange and unreasonable, it 
is undoubtedly true, that in many minds this purely liber- 
ative and destructive course of legislation has given rise to 
the notion that perpetual meddling by Act of Parliament is 
necessary to prevent stagnation — that unless our legislators 
keep stirring up things progress will stop ; that what is called 
on platforms ' beneficial legislation ' is a kind of stimulating 
manure indispensable to the national growth. To those who 
hold this profoundly foolish, but by no means uncommon view, 
the very name laissez-faire implies dereliction of duty, and 
thereby stands condemned." Who cannot bear testimony to 
this strange confusion of ideas ? Because repealing or undoing 
Acts of Parliament are themselves called legislation, they are 
frequently adduced as proofs of the efficacy of legislation. 
Should the question be asked at a public meeting, "What 
good has ever come of legislation yet ? " some one is sure to 



Ill THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 85 

reply, "Look at the repeal of the corn -laws." It is more 
than probable that the expression laissez-faire is still commonly 
understood in its oldest sense to mean: Let things alone, let 
them drift, let that which is filthy be filthy still. There is no 
doubt that this is the sense in which it was used by the 
French Minister of State who first gave the phrase political 
currency. And this may be another cause of its present 
unpopularity. Another vulgar notion, which is thoroughly 
disposed of in Mr. Herbert Spencer's Over -Legislation, is the 
erroneous one that if the maxim is carried out the duties of 
the State will necessarily be reduced to nil, and there will be 
no further use for a legislature. To those who are acquainted 
with the chaotic state of the English law and its ponderous 
procedure this mistaken notion will not require disproof The 
reform, completion, and codification of the law will supply 
material for many an abler Parliament than any we have yet 
sent to Westminster. 

Lord Pembroke makes search for a simple principle which 
shall " limit the rights of society against the individual, and of 
the individual against society — a principle which if it cannot, 
owing to the limitation of human knowledge, completely solve 
all difficulties, will at least prove a true guide in all cases in 
which we can see correctly how to apply it." The search is 
fruitless and the discovery is pronounced impossible. " I can 
no more imagine a principle that would tell us in every case 
the limits of individual and State rights, than one that would 
tell us in every case whether the dictates of egoism or altruism 
are to be obeyed." The principle attributed to the school of 
Spencer and Von Humboldt, viz. " absolute freedom for each, 
limited only by the like freedom for others," is examined and 
discarded as only " an undue straining of language." " If by 
any effort of ingenuity it be stretched wide enough to be made 
the true rule in all known stages of human progress, it is 
evident that its width of interpretation would make it quite 
worthless as a practical guide to us. If, on the other hand, it 
is admitted that it could not apply as a wise practical rule to 
all these phases, or even to any one of them that has yet been 
known — and it is only claimed that it is an ideal principle 
towards which progress is constantly tending, and which may 



86 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

become of universal application when men are very different 
from what they are now — its equal uselessness to us in the 
present day as a practical guide or test is no less plain." And, 
as a test of its value as a practical guide, the writer asks those 
who hold it to consider how they propose to apply it to the 
law of marriage. " Are they prepared to abrogate this greatest 
of all interferences with freedom of contract, and do they hold 
that such a reform would bring a preponderance of benefit in 
our present state of civilisation ? If, on the other hand, they 
declare that the principle of absolute freedom for each, limited 
only by the like freedom of all, does not condemn such a law, 
I am puzzled to guess what form of State regulation it is 
capable of defending us against. We must not loosen or 
tighten its interpretation to suit our convenience." The writer 
reverts to this awkward question of marriage : " I think," he 
says, " we have a right to ask those who regard this as an 
infallible practical rule whether they are prepared to adhere 
to it in this instance ? If they answer in the afi&rmative, as 
Yon Humboldt did, most people will have a strong opinion 
about the soundness and wisdom of the principle." Now, 
without in the least disputing Lord Pembroke's right to ask this 
crucial question, the extreme individualist may with equal right 
decline to answer it. Clearly he must either admit that the 
marriage law is an exception, which upsets the trustworthiness 
of his principle, or else he must express the contrary view ; 
in which case there can be no doubt that "most people 
will have a strong opinion," not only about the soundness 
of his principle, but also about the desirableness of his 
acquaintance. And unless he is prepared to pose as a 
martyr to his political doctrines, he had better keep his 
mouth shut. His interrogator may, from that, possibly 
infer his inner admission, but it is surely cruel to demand 
an answer to such a question in the market - place. 
Perhaps Lord Pembroke's own opinion upon this point 
would be interesting, and since he will admit that we 
"have a right to demand it," he will doubtless favour us 
with it on the occasion of his promised return to this 
subject. 

When Lord Pembroke confidently asks, " Yet will any one 



Ill THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE ^7 

contend that the abolition of prescribed cab fares would be an 
improvement ? " I may venture to point out, not only that 
the suggestion has been seriously made, but that it has actually 
been carried out in practice in the city of Liverpool, and 
succeeded remarkably well. We cannot follow the writer 
through his extremely interesting and profound examination of 
the application to the concrete of Mr. Spencer's division of 
State action into negatively-regulative and positively-regulative ; 
but I am quite ready to admit that until this part of the 
essay has been carefully considered and fairly answered, in- 
dividualists of the absolutist school, of whom Mr. Auberon 
Herbert is the able, albeit somewhat Quixotic chief in this 
country, must rest content to sit in the cool shades of specula- 
tive philosophy, and leave the field of practical politics to 
others. " Experience and observation will enable us to frame 
rules and principles that will become wider and more general 
with the advance of political science ; and if in this science 
the first principles should be the last things to be discovered, 
we should remember that it will prove no exception to the 
general rule." This is the outcome of Lord Pembroke's study, 
and it is in complete harmony with the teachings of inductive 
philosophy. 

Let me cite one more authority on this great question. 
Mr. Goschen is known rather as a shrewd and observant 
statesman than as a student of abstract science, and it is 
gratifying to find him warning the public against the dangers 
of modern State socialism. "The dangers in the road of 
social reconstruction under Government control are so grave 
that they can scarcely be exaggerated ; dangers arising not 
only from the serious chance of inefficiency in the methods 
chosen, but from the transfer of responsibilities by the estab- 
lishment of national law in the place of individual duty ; from 
the withdrawal of confidence in the qualities of men in order 
to bestow it on the merits of administrations ; from the 
growing tendency to invoke the aid of the State, and the 
declining belief in individual power." Mr. Goschen appears 
to derive some comfort from the reflection that pari passu with 
an increased demand for State interference goes an increased 
tendency towards decentralisation. " The transfer of work in 



88 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

the way of interference from the central body to local 
authorities diminishes the extension of central power and 
patronage, which is a most undesirable accompaniment of 
increased Government action ; it reduces the number of the 
army of men whom the central authority are compelled to 
employ ; it eases the work of the Government ; it imposes 
public functions on different classes of citizens ; it interests an 
additional stratum of society in public business ; and lastly, it 
provides to some extent a safety-valve against possible tyranny 
on the part of an all-powerful class. If the extended demand 
for Government interference is to be progressively satisfied, it 
is earnestly to be hoped that we may proceed -pari jpassu on 
the lines of decentralisation." I fail to see that decentral- 
isation can be an antidote to democratic despotism. What 
is the use of reducing the number of central of&cials if ten 
times the number is to be maintained by the local authorities ? 
Why ease the work of a government which will only make use 
of its increased opportunities to devise new mischief, simply in 
order that local bodies may help to do it ? Why impose 
public functions on new strata of society, when those functions 
are abnormal and despotic ? If we are to have a despot, 
myriad -headed or otherwise, the more central, cumbrous, and 
unwieldy the machinery through which it has to obtain its 
ends, the better for its victims. The tyranny of the Sultan is 
as nothing to the tyranny of the pashas. The larger the area 
from which the central body is drawn, the greater the number 
of conflicting interests which it is necessary to reconcile before 
the desired policy can be carried out, and the better the 
chance of its being emasculated during the process. Local 
despotism is the worst despotism. Decentralisation cannot go 
farther than the family ; and what kind of local government is 
more loathsome than the unchecked rule of a brutal pater- 
familias ? Local option, in regard to liquor and to other 
matters, is part and parcel of a system of decentralisation 
which, for the trampling underfoot of private liberty and the 
crushing out of individuality, has no equal among modern forms 
of government. When the normal functions of the central 
legislature, and of provincial legislatures down to the muni- 
cipality, have been defined and approximately adapted to the 



THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 



age, then, and then only, is decentralisation compatible with 
civil liberty. 

"How," asked Mr. Gladstone, "is the time of the House of 
Commons to be economised ? " The answer is simple : Let 
the House of Commons mind its own business — thoroughly 
and exclusively. 



CHAPTEE IV 

WHAT IS PEOPERTY? 

" Propeety/' says Proudhon, " is theft." Very likely : we 
must not dismiss this opinion with a sneer. Proudhon was 
unquestionably one of the clearest thinkers of his time. The 
institution of property is described by Jeremy Bentham as " the 
noblest triumph of humanity over itself" Good again ! But 
the two propositions do not quite tally. Let us take an Italian 
opinion: "The right of property," says Beccaria/ the great Italian 
jurist, " is a terrible right, which perhaps is not necessary." If 
we inquire of the poets we get something of this kind — 

" property ! what art thou but a weight 
To crush all soul, aud paralyse all strength, 
And grind all heart and action out of man 1 " 

But poets are not always meant to be taken seriously. 
Here is the opinion of the most serious and respectable of 
theologians, the worthy Dr. Paley : " Property communicates a 
charm to whatever is the object of it. It is the first of our 
abstract ideas. It cleaves to us the closest and the longest. 
It endears to the child its plaything, to the peasant his cottage, 
to the landholder his estate. It supplies the place of prospect 
and of scenery. Instead of coveting the beauty of distant 
situations, it teaches every man to find it in his own. It gives 
boldness and grandeur to plains and fens, tinge and colouring 
to clays and fallows." At any rate, property seems to be a 
remarkable institution. It inspires the intensest reverence 
and the profoundest abhorrence. 

Perhaps it will be said that I have cited extreme 

^ Quoted from Bentham's Theory of Legislation. 



CHAP. IV WHAT IS PROPERTY'^ 91 

authorities. Then I will appeal to an authority who ranks 
above them all, one who knew more about the conception in 
its essence than all put together — John Austin. Surely from 
him we shall learn whether property is a divine or a diabolical 
creation. Here is his definition : " By property I mean every 
right over a thing which is indefinite in point of user." There 
it is. There is nothing very terrible in it, nothing very 
sublime. It is tame enough, but it is true. It is the meaning 
which every one must wish to convey, if he knows what he is 
talking about, and if he wishes to be clearly understood by 
others. But it requires explanation. 

A right over a thing is a power to use or enjoy the thing 
somehow or other. Otherwise it is not worth having or talk- 
ing about. The moon may be solemnly conveyed to me by 
the State in consideration of my public services. I am grate- 
ful for nothing. But not every power to use or enjoy a thing 
is a right. The cat which has caught a sparrow has the power 
to eat the sparrow, but we do not speak of the cat's proprietary 
right. A right is a power sanctioned by the State. Eights 
over specific things are but species of rights in general, and 
proprietary rights again are but varieties of rights over things. 

Eights in general (by which term I mean to denote all 
those liberties which are recognised and sanctioned by the State) 
may be divided into two classes — rights which are expressed 
in terms of things, and rights which do not relate to things. 
In Eussia a citizen may not quit the country without a State 
permit. In England we enjoy that liberty. This is a right 
which is not a right over a thing. In France a married man 
with a family cannot bequeath all his goods to any one he 
chooses. In England he can do so. This is a right over things. 
Let us dismiss all those liberties which are not rights over things, 
or more correctly speaking, which are not liberties expressed 
in terms of things, and consider this latter class alone. 

We shall find that rights over things may be subdivided 
into two great classes — rights to Use and rights to Value. I let 
my house to John Smith, and I mortgage it to Tom Jones. 
Smith has a right to the Use of the house ; Jones has a right 
only to part of its Value. Now according to Austin's defini- 
tion of property, rights to value are not proprietary rights. It 



92 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

is true that Blackstone and the lawyers speak of lien as a " special 
qualified property ; " but this is only a learned way of saying 
that they do not know what it is ; we may pass it by. It re- 
minds one of the celebrated definition of a metaphysician as a 
person talking about what he does not understand to one who 
does not understand him. E"or are all rights to Use proprietary. 
But Property is a species of the genus Use. Let us see whether 
we cannot clearly distinguish between those Uses which are 
properly called Property and those which are not. 

Before doing this, it may be as well to note that not only 
ordinary people but also lawyers and jurists employ the term 
Property in two very different senses — a wide and a narrow 
sense. Hence the extraordinary confusion. In the wider and 
improper sense it is used to denote all rights to exclusive use ; 
available against anybody and everybody, or as the jurists say 
" against the world at large." Then we have Blackstone and 
the Fog school trying to use the word in two senses at once, 
and introducing such muddy, meaningless expressions as that 
just quoted. No wonder we have such divergent views of the 
institution. The definition given by the Prench Code is about 
as useless as any definition well could be. It defines nothing. 
" Property is the right of enjoying and disposing of a thing in 
the most absolute manner, provided the owner does not 
make any use of it which is prohibited by law." It is obvious 
that we all have proprietary rights over anything whatever if 
this definition is correct. I have a right to use your house or 
your horse in any way which is not contrary to law. 

Whether property is a good or a bad thing clearly depends 
on the answer to the question, What is property ? The same 
thing is true of liberty. As I have said, property after all is 
only a species of liberty. What is true of liberty in general 
is also true of that kind of liberty which we choose to call 
property. " There is no such thing as natural property," said 
Bentham ; " it is entirely the work of law." But law, we are 
told, is contrary to liberty. It therefore behoves us to inquire a 
little more carefully concerning this more general expression. 
Liberty. Let us follow Bentham : — 

" The proposition that every law is contrary to hberty, though as clear 
as evidence can make it, is not generally acknowledged. On the contrary, 



IV WHAT IS PROPERTY^ 93 

those among the friends of liberty who are more ardent than enlightened 
make it a duty of conscience to combat this truth. How they pervert 
language ! They refuse to employ the word liberty in its common 
acceptation ; they speak a tongue peculiar to themselves. This is the 
definition they give of liberty : ' Liberty consists in the right of doing 
everything which is not injurious to another.' But is this the ordinary sense 
of the word ? Is not the liberty to do evil liberty ? If not, what is it ? 
What word can we use in speaking of it ? Do we not say that it is neces- 
sary to take away liberty from idiots and bad men because they abuse it ?" 

Bentham is right. Nothing can be clearer than that law 
restricts liberty. But at the same time we ought not to lose 
sight of the fact that law also widens liberty. For example, 
if it gives me a right to do what I should be powerless to do 
without the sanction of the State, it is clear that my liberties 
are widened at the same time that the liberties of all other 
persons are restricted proportionately. And here I will venture 
to state a proposition. Law creates more liberty than it 
destroys. Any law which fails to do this in the long run is 
destined to perish. This truth is nowhere more forcibly ex- 
emplified than it is in the case of those liberties which we 
call proprietary rights. We hear people talk about the sacred- 
ness of property, as if it were more sacred than any other 
right. So far from being primordial, property arose with law, 
and could not exist without it. As Bentham puts it : " The 
savage who has killed a deer may hope to keep it for himself 
so long as his cave is undiscovered, so long as he watches to 
defend it and is stronger than his rivals, but that is all. If 
we suppose the least agreement among savages to respect the 
acquisitions of each other, we see the introduction of a prin- 
ciple to which no name can be given but that of Law'' 

It is sometimes, though vulgarly, supposed that property is 
the right to do whatever you like with your own. True, it 
often does amount to that ; but this is quite accidental. On the 
other hand, frequently enough the proprietor enjoys fewer and 
less rights over the thing owned than some others enjoy. Tor 
example, the owners of land held under the old tenure of 
emphyteusis exercised hardly any right whatever over his own 
property ; so little, that at last the praetor came to regard the 
empliyteuta {i.e. the tenant) as the true proprietor, or, as we 
should say, the equitable owner. ISTot only was a grantee 



94 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

entitled to possess the lands, to reap the fruits, under the 
burden of annual payment, but he could make changes in the 
substance by reclaiming waste land, building, planting, and 
other operations, provided he did not deteriorate the subject. 
He could sell his right and it descended to his heirs. In case 
of a sale the proprietor had, it is true, the privilege of pre- 
emption if he was anxious to purchase the subject on his own 
account, and willing to pay the price offered for it ; and for 
every alienation to a stranger he was entitled to exact a fine 
of about two per cent on the price. The emphyteuta' s right 
was forfeited and reverted to the proprietor if he deteriorated 
the subject or neglected to pay the annual rent for a period of 
three years. The right might also be extinguished by consent 
of parties, by total destruction of subject, by expiry of term (if 
any), and by the death of grantee without leaving lawful heirs. 

A very similar real right was called " superficies " ; a 
landed proprietor conceded to any person an area of ground 
for erecting a building upon it, but without parting with the 
ownership of the soil. The property of the building remained 
with the proprietor of the land, but the grantee acquired a real 
right to the full possession and enjoyment of the edifice, either 
for a definite period or in perpetuity; and this right was 
transferable during life, and it descended to heirs. It was 
regulated by contract, and might be granted either for a price 
down or for an annual rent. " In many respects," says Lord 
Mackenzie, "this jus sujperficiariuni bears a strong re- 
semblance to the long building leases granted by landowners 
in England in consideration of a rent, and under reservation 
of the ownership of the soil."^ 

In our own country the holders of very long leases, 
though not regarded as proprietors, certainly enjoy rights over 
the property quite out of proportion to those exercised by the 
freeholder. Probably it is from a feeling of the truth of this 
that there is at the present time a very strong desire on the 
part of many to convert the leaseholder into the proprietor, or, 
at least, to give him every facility for becoming the proprietor 
in cases where the lease is a long one. I do not wish in this 
place to offer any opinion on the merits of this political 

^ See Lord Mackenzie's Studies in Roman Laio 



WHAT IS PROPERTY? 



95 



question, but I may point out that the proposed change in its 
essence is rather one of juridical classification than anything 
else. I do not say that much injustice might not result from 
what may appear to be nothing more than a mistaken classifica- 
tion, just in the same way as much injustice was done, and 
still is done nearly every day owing to the action of the law, 
in accordance with the accepted definitions of such words as 
partnership, use, lien, etc. All I desire to af&rm is, that unjust 
action need not necessarily result from bad juridical definitions. 
After this digression we will return to the distinction 
between property and other rights to use things. I suppose 
most of us think, in spite of legal jargon and of the sophistries 
of jurisprudence, that we know pretty well what property is. 
Let us see. Who is the proprietor of a mortgaged estate ? 
The person who holds the land, so to speak, as security for his 
loan ? or the original owner ? Who is the owner of a pawned 
watch ? The pawnbroker, or he who pawned it ? These are 
two very simple cases, and yet the more we look at them the 
more difficult does the answer become. Of course we know 
what view of the matter the Courts will take in this and other 
countries ; but that is not the question I am asking. Believing 
that the term proprietor has a meaning, I ask. Who is the 
true proprietor ? not, Who is regarded by the English law as 
the proprietor ? I suppose there can be no two opinions as 
to who is the owner of a hired horse ; yet, if we generalise 
and say that it is easy to declare who is the owner of any 
hired thing, we shall find ourselves at once in a difficulty. If 
the article lent be a horse or a plough, there is no difficulty 
about the matter. But if A lends a hundred sovereigns to ^, 
who then is the owner of those gold pieces ? Or if a testator 
leaves a house and a cellar of wine to his widow for life, with 
remainder to his children, who is the owner of the house, who 
of the wine ? Now, apart from legal technicalities, we may 
say that the widow is not the owner of the house, but that she 
is the owner of the wine. Who is the owner of a watch 
which has been stolen and sold by the thief to a hond fide 
purchaser ? Is it the original owner of the watch, who has 
never voluntarily parted with it ? Or is it the man who has 
paid for it hond fide, not knowing it to have been stolen ? 



96 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

Here again we know what is the view acted upon in the 
English Courts. We also know how the law of ancient Eome 
regarded the matter ; and we might ascertain, if we cared to 
do so, who is the owner according to the French, Prussian, or 
Italian codes, and who is treated as the owner by the Ma- 
hommedan or Hindoo law. But what we want to come at is, 
Who is really the owner of the watch ? Who is the owner of 
a piece of prairie land which has been imperfectly fenced in 
by some pioneer of civilisation ? Who is the owner of a newly- 
discovered island ? Suppose a draper deposits a certain 
amount of cloth with a tailor with instructions to make it up 
into clothing, and the tailor does it, who is the owner of the 
clothing ? Is it the draper who was originally the owner of 
the cloth ? or is it the tailor who converted the cloth into 
wearing apparel ? In Eome, if an artist painted a picture on 
canvas or board belonging to another man, the picture belonged 
to the painter and not to the owner of the canvas or board. 
" For it would be ridiculous," says Justinian, " that a work by 
Apelles or Parrhasius should go as an accession to a wretched 
tablet." But if a poet wrote verses on another man's parch- 
ment the finished article belonged to the owner of the parch- 
ment. If a workman made clothing out of cloth or skins, or 
a table out of wood belonging to another, the new goods be- 
longed to the workman, and the original owner of the material 
had only a lien upon them to the extent of its original value. 
But even here there was an exception where the product could 
be retransformed into its original state, as in the case of 
silversmith's work, which could be melted again into bullion. 
In this case the original owner of the silver was the owner of 
the plate, and the workman had only the lien. If there is to 
be found any general principle underlying these apparently 
contradictory rules, it is, I think, the principle that the 
property or dominion should belong to him whose just share 
in the finished article is of the greater value ; and the lien to 
him whose share is less. Thus, as a rule, a picture is worth a 
good deal more than double the value of the canvas on which 
it is painted, whereas the value of parchment was in Eoman 
times greater than the cost of clerk work upon it. The poet 
could get his poem copied out again at less than the price of 



IV WHAT IS PROPERTY'^ 97 

the parcliment. So, as a rule, the larger part of the value of 
plate is the value of the precious metal of which it is made. 
When wine was made from grapes it could not be restored to its 
original form, and moreover it was worth far more than double 
the value of the original grapes, and it was held to be the 
property of the wine-maker. 

All this may seem of very slight consideration, but in truth 
it is of the utmost importance. Upon the answers given to 
these very simple questions depend the future of the land 
question, the future of the Church question, and, more im- 
portant than either, the future of the labour question. 

We have seen that not all rights over things are proprietary 
rights. For example, I have a right to ride on a horse which I 
have hired from a livery stable-keeper. That right may or may 
not be available against all the world ; but in neither case can it 
be regarded as a proprietary right. There is no particular reason 
why a right to the use of a hired thing should not avail against 
all the world, beyond the fact that in England and most other 
countries it does not. Once upon a time -^ a canal company 
granted to a person of the name of Hill the exclusive right of put- 
ting pleasure-boats on their canal. Hill very naturally thought 
that, under these circumstances, he had a right to prevent any 
one else from doing so. Consequently when, nevertheless, 
another person did put pleasure-boats on the canal, he instantly 
sued him ; but the Court decided against him. " A grantor," it 
was held, " may bind himself by covenant to allow any right he 
pleases over his property, but he cannot annex to it a new in- 
cident, so as to enable the grantee to sue in his own name for an 
infringement of such a limited right as that now claimed." 
This may be good law, but it is shockingly bad policy. 

But are we any nearer the discovery of the distinction 
between rights over things which are correctly styled proprietary 
rights and other kinds of rights over things ? It is true we 
have seen that so far from being a " right to do what you like 
with your own," property is sometimes almost an infinitesimal 
right over the thing owned. What is the most noticeable 
difference between the rights of one who lets a horse out for 
hire, and the rights of one who hires the horse ? Suppose you 

^Hillv. Tupper, 2 H. and C. 121. 
H 



100 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

the land for purposes of public utility, because it is not. He 
simply has the indefinite rights which remain after deducting the 
definite rights vested in other people inclusive of the State. We 
know that these rights have been exercised over and over again of 
late years. In the case of railway concessions, the landowner 
receives full compensation for his interest in the land ; beyond 
this he has no claim whatever. It is his misfortune if his 
ancient memories and family associations are ruthlessly 
sacrificed in the public interest ; and there the matter ends. 
He holds his land subject to the liability to be turned out 
whenever it shall be to the public interest to turn him out. 
The accident has come about which renders it desirable to 
make public property of his land, and he has no more ground 
of complaint than he would have if a flash of lightning sent 
his chimney-stack through his roof. 

Next to this definite State right come public rights of way 
and other uses which have been always admitted as customary 
These public rights over the land of the landowner are perfectly 
definite. Again, there are frequently private easements to 
deduct. That is to say, a neighbour has a right of way across 
the land, or a right to the support of his house, or a negative 
right to the stream which flows through the land ; a right to for- 
bid the landowner from molesting or spoiling or diverting such 
stream. Sometimes, as in the case of copyhold, the right of dig- 
ging under the surface for coal or iron is vested in some one who 
is not, strictly speaking, the landowner. Finally, the owner must 
so exercise his indefinite residual rights as not to injure others. 
He must not become, or allow his property to become, a nuisance. 
But when we have deducted all these definite rights vested in 
others, there is still left a residuum — a large fasciculus — of 
undefined rights, which are properly described as proprietary. 

With these qualifications what conceivable objection can 
be raised to property in land ? When we see that property 
simply means the indefinite rights which cannot be enumerated 
simply because they are so indefinite, is there any serious and 
valid reason why these rights, whether over land or anything 
else, should not be vested in some one individual ? For my 
part I not only see no reasonable objection to this course, but, 
furthermore, I observe that in this and in other countries, and 



IV 



WHA T IS PR OPER TY? 97 



the parchment. So, as a rule, the larger part of the value of 
plate is the value of the precious metal of which it is made. 
When wine was made from grapes it could not be restored to its 
original form, and moreover it was worth far more than double 
the value of the original grapes, and it was held to be the 
property of the wine-maker. 

All this may seem of very slight consideration, but in truth 
it is of the utmost importance. Upon the answers given to 
these very simple questions depend the future of the land 
question, the future of the Church question, and, more im- 
portant than either, the future of the labour question. 

We have seen that not all rights over things are proprietary 
rights. For example, I have a right to ride on a horse which I 
have hired from a livery stable-keeper. .That right may or may 
not be available against all the world ; but in neither case can it 
be regarded as a proprietary right. There is no particular reason 
why a right to the use of a hired thing should not avail against 
all the world, beyond the fact that in England and most other 
countries it does not. Once upon a time -^ a canal company 
granted to a person of the name of Hill the exclusive right of put- 
ting pleasure-boats on their canal. Hill very naturally thought 
that, under these circumstances, he had a right to prevent any 
one else from doing so. Consequently when, nevertheless, 
another person did put pleasure-boats on the canal, he instantly 
sued him ; but the Court decided against him. " A grantor," it 
was held, " may bind himseK by covenant to allow any right he 
pleases over his property, but he cannot annex to it a new in- 
cident, so as to enable the grantee to sue in his own name for an 
infringement of such a limited right as that now claimed." 
This may be good law, but it is shockingly bad policy. 

But are we any nearer the discovery of the distinction 
between rights over things which are correctly styled proprietary 
rights and other kinds of rights over things ? It is true we 
have seen that so far from being a " right to do what you like 
with your own," property is sometimes almost an infinitesimal 
right over the thing owned. What is the most noticeable 
difference between the rights of one who lets a horse out for 
hire, and the rights of one who hires the horse ? Suppose you 

1 Hill V. Tupper, 2 H. and C. 121. 
H 



100 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

the land for purposes of public utility, because it is not. He 
simply has the indefinite rights which remain after deducting the 
definite rights vested in other people inclusive of the State. We 
know that these rights have been exercised over and over again of 
late years. In the case of railway concessions, the landowner 
receives full compensation for his interest in the land ; beyond 
this he has no claim whatever. It is his misfortune if his 
ancient memories and family associations are ruthlessly 
sacrificed in the public interest ;^ and there the matter ends. 
He holds his land subject to the liability to be turned out 
whenever it shall be to the public interest to turn him out. 
The accident has come about which renders it desirable to 
make public property of his land, and he has no more ground 
of complaint than he would have if a flash of lightning sent 
his chimney-stack through his roof. 

;N"ext to this definite State right come public rights of way 
and other uses which have been always admitted as customary 
These public rights over the land of the landowner are perfectly 
definite. Again, there are frequently private easements to 
deduct. That is to say, a neighbour has a right of way across 
the land, or a right to the support of his house, or a negative 
right to the stream which flows through the land ; a right to for- 
bid the landowner from molesting or spoiling or diverting such 
stream. Sometimes, as in the case of copyhold, the right of dig- 
ging under the surface for coal or iron is vested in some one who 
is not, strictly speaking, the landowner. Finally, the owner must 
so exercise his indefinite residual rights as not to injure others. 
He must not become, or allow his property to become, a nuisance. 
But when we have deducted all these definite rights vested in 
others, there is still left a residuum — a large fasciculus — of 
undefined rights, which are properly described as proprietary. 

With these qualifications what conceivable objection can 
be raised to property in land ? When we see that property 
simply means the indefinite rights which cannot be enumerated 
simply because they are so indefinite, is there any serious and 
valid reason why these rights, whether over land or anything 
else, should not be vested in some one individual ? For my 
part I not only see no reasonable objection to this course, but, 
furthermore, I observe that in this and in other countries, and 



IV 



WHA T IS PR OPER TY? i o i 



also throughout all history, property in land has done more to 
stimulate exertion on that land than any other system whatever. 
We see what miracles have been wrought in certain parts of 
France and Belgium by the system of peasant proprietorship. 
I do not say that these peasant proprietors are altogether happy 
or prosperous. The contrary is probably attributable to the 
absurd laws interfering with freedom of bequest in those 
countries. So far as the soil itself is concerned, there can be 
no doubt that its fertility has been enormously stimulated by 
the system of land property. The peasant owner of a plot of 
one acre will produce from that acre more than three labourers 
can produce from an equal area belonging to somebody else. 
So it is said. Surely, in itself, this is a strong argument in 
favour of separate ownership of land ; and probably those who 
call themselves land nationalisationists, and who run a tilt against 
private property in land, are doing more harm, or would do 
more if they could, than any other class of socialists in the country. 
I admit at once that many valid objections can be urged 
against the system of property in land as it is at present 
regulated. Let us examine one or two of these objections 
carefully. First, it is alleged that the landowner exercises too 
much influence over his tenants, that his power is hardly 
compatible with the perfect freedom of those who hold under 
him. Certainly this has been the case in many parts of the 
country, but it was much more marked some years ago than it 
is now, and what was called landlord tyranny is almost a thing 
of the past. But, apart from the undoubted influence which 
his position seems to give him, it is said that the contracts 
which are entered into between landlord and tenant are, as a 
rule, unfair to the tenant. Well, if this is so — and I for one 
do not believe that in the majority of cases there is any 
foundation for the contention — still, if it is true even in a 
great many cases, this is no argument against the system of 
private property in land. It simply goes to show that the 
farmers of England are not yet as well advanced in organisation 
as the artizans of the towns. If the farmer finds himself 
unable, individually, to provide for entering into a sound and 
fair contract, he ought to have recourse to the ordinary 
resources of free men, that is to say, union. It is folly to 



I04 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

manner by the instrumentality of registration. The Lord 
Chancellor, in presenting the Land Transfer Bill, 1887, 
defended it against the charge of State interference. The Land 
Act of 1875 had failed mainly because it made registration 
optional. The new Bill proposed to make it compulsory. " It 
is untrue," said the Lord Chancellor, " that the compulsory 
registration of land is an interference with the liberty of the 
subject ; it is the creation of a system of land-tenure, and it 
would be as correct to describe the ' Statute of Frauds ' as an 
interference with liberty, as to make that complaint about this 
measure." This is perfectly true. Land registration will not 
meet with the opposition of individualists on the ground that 
compulsory registration curtails freedom, and substitutes State 
action for individual action. The interference comes in when 
the State enforces a contract at all. It is a normal State 
function ; provided it is safeguarded against fraud. Hence the 
State cannot undertake to enforce all promises ; it must limit 
the enforcement of contract in several ways. In some cases it 
is satisfied with sufficient verbal evidence of the fact of the 
promise, in other cases the promise must be in writing, in 
others again writing is not enough, it must be in the form of a 
deed (a form which originally amounted to a public notification), 
and in those cases where no writing is required, it must have 
proof of consideration. It will not undertake to sanction a 
nude pact. JSTow surely all these carefully-balanced conditions 
are the very bulwarks of liberty. They are the outcome of 
ages of experience, the very progeny of individualism. There 
is no reason whatever why a one-sided promise should not be 
enforced by the State if such promise was made. Omne mrhum 
cle ore fideli cadit in debihtm. Yes, but was the promise made ? 
What is the evidence which the State ought to accept ? That 
is the question. Is a little hard swearing to ruin a man ? Or 
is it not better to insist upon certain simple precautions which 
in no way trench upon the freedom of a citizen, and which 
safeguard the alleged promisor against false evidence, if not also 
against his own hastiness ? No one is aggrieved. If writing 
is required, let the promisee get the agreement in writing. If 
this gives the other party time to think better of the bargain, 
so much the better. 



IV 



WHA T IS PR OPER TY? i o i 



also throughout all history, property in land has done more to 
stimulate exertion on that land than any other system whatever. 
We see what miracles have been wrought in certain parts of 
France and Belgium by the system of peasant proprietorship. 
I do not say that these peasant proprietors are altogether happy 
or prosperous. The contrary is probably attributable to the 
absurd laws interfering with freedom of bequest in those 
countries. So far as the soil itself is concerned, there can be 
no doubt that its fertility has been enormously stimulated by 
the system of land property. The peasant owner of a plot of 
one acre will produce from that acre more than three labourers 
can produce from an equal area belonging to somebody else. 
So it is said. Surely, in itself, this is a strong argument in 
favour of separate ownership of land ; and probably those who 
call themselves land nationalisationists, and who run a tilt against 
private property in land, are doing more harm, or would do 
more if they could, than any other class of socialists in the country. 
I admit at once that many valid objections can be urged 
against the system of property in land as it is at present 
regulated. Let us examine one or two of these objections 
carefully. First, it is alleged that the landowner exercises too 
much influence over his tenants, that his power is hardly 
compatible with the perfect freedom of those who hold under 
him. Certainly this has been the case in many parts of the 
country, but it was much more marked some years ago than it 
is now, and what was called landlord tyranny is almost a thing 
of the past. But, apart from the undoubted influence which 
his position seems to give him, it is said that the contracts 
which are entered into between landlord and tenant are, as a 
rule, unfair to the tenant. Well, if this is so — and I for one 
do not believe that in the majority of cases there is any 
foundation for the contention — still, if it is true even in a 
great many cases, this is no argument against the system of 
private property in land. It simply goes to show that the 
farmers of England are not yet as well advanced in organisation 
as the artizans of the towns. If the farmer finds himself 
unable, individually, to provide for entering into a sound and 
fair contract, he ought to have recourse to the ordinary 
resources of free men, that is to say, union. It is folly to 



104 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

manner by the instrumentality of registration. The Lord 
Chancellor, in presenting the Land Transfer Bill, 1887, 
defended it against the charge of State interference. The Land 
Act of 1875 had failed mainly because it made registration 
optional. The new Bill proposed to make it compulsory. " It 
is untrue," said the Lord Chancellor, " that the compulsory 
registration of land is an interference with the liberty of the 
subject ; it is the creation of a system of land-tenure, and it 
would be as correct to describe the ' Statute of Frauds ' as an 
interference with liberty, as to make that complaint about this 
measure." This is perfectly true. Land registration will not 
meet with the opposition of individualists on the ground that 
compulsory registration curtails freedom, and substitutes State 
action for individual action. The interference comes in when 
the State enforces a contract at all. It is a normal State 
function ; provided it is safeguarded against fraud. Hence the 
State cannot undertake to enforce all promises ; it must limit 
the enforcement of contract in several ways. In some cases it 
is satisfied with sufficient verbal evidence of the fact of the 
promise, in other cases the promise must be in writing, in 
others again writing is not enough, it must be in the form of a 
deed (a form which originally amounted to a public notification), 
and in those cases where no writing is required, it must have 
proof of consideration. It will not undertake to sanction a 
nude pact. Now surely all these carefully-balanced conditions 
are the very bulwarks of liberty. They are the outcome of 
ages of experience, the very progeny of individualism. There 
is no reason whatever why a one-sided promise should not be 
enforced by the State if such promise was made. Omne verhum 
de ore fideli cadit in dehihcm. Yes, but was the promise made ? 
What is the evidence which the State ought to accept ? That 
is the question. Is a little hard swearing to ruin a man ? Or 
is it not better to insist upon certain simple precautions which 
in no way trench upon the freedom of a citizen, and which 
safeguard the alleged promisor against false evidence, if not also 
against his own hastiness ? No one is aggrieved. If writing 
is required, let the promisee get the agreement in writing. If 
this gives the other party time to think better of the bargain, 
so much the better. 



IV WHA T IS PR OPER TY ? 1 05 

But there is a stronger reason even than this in favour of 
what is unfortunately mis -called compulsory registration. 
Registration is undoubtedly in modern times the simplest and 
most perfect form of public notification. Third parties are 
frequently, nay almost invariably, interested in the transfer of 
land. How are these third parties to be apprised of the 
intended transfer by which their own rights may be seriously 
affected ? The old formalities of emancipation with the scales 
and the balance, the libripens and the five witnesses, made a 
suf6.cient noise in a place the size of ancient Eome. So the 
formalities which accompanied livery of seisin, the number and 
importance of the persons present, the solemnity of the words 
and gestures of the feoffor, all contributed to render the transfer 
notorious in the neighbourhood. In Justinian's time, when 
res mancipi had been absorbed by res nee mancipi and 
when traditio sufficed to transfer ownership ; and now in 
England, where a deed can be executed in a cupboard without 
the knowledge of interested persons who possibly reside in 
remote parts of the country ; the door is open to fraud. We 
cannot come back to the beating of boundaries, the blowing of 
trumpets, and the thrashing of boys and priests at the land- 
marks ; but we can make use of a louder trumpet than any 
known to our forefathers — the public register, supported by the 
public press. With such an instrument in our hands, it is 
simply criminal to neglect it. A Bill for withdrawing State 
recognition from unregistered land -transfers should speedily 
become law, and so increase the liberty of Englishmen. 

Fourthly, it is alleged by the opponents of a separate 
system of land ownership that the landowner pockets — what ? 
The unearned increment ? Surely this phrase expresses the 
most extraordinary piece of illogical confusion that could well 
have been palmed off upon a semi -intelligent public by so 
honest and clear-headed a thinker as John Stuart Mill. How 
he could have brought himself to talk about unearned incre- 
ment as he did, is one of those riddles with which Genius every 
now and then puzzles us. Unearned increment simply means 
the reward of successful risk. Two men invest a sum of 
money each in a piece of land. A in this, and B in that. 
One plot turns out a success and the other a failure ; you turn 



io8 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

that in taking a seven years' average (as is done by the Bill) of 
the rents received from such land, it would be necessary in all 
justice to estimate the rental which the landlord virtually pays 
to himself for the use of his land for sporting purposes, and it 
seems to me that even if an actual rent was required it would 
be very easy for landowners to evade fthe law by renting each 
other's lands at their proper valuation for sporting purposes. 
We are driven to inquire whether Mr. Bradlaugh proposes to 
forbid the use of land by the owner for this purpose, or for 
any other purpose than that of food -producing. "Whenever 
land is left in the natural state, because in the opinion of its 
owner it would be unprofitable to cultivate it, we may be sure 
that even if the State got it for nothing at all it would incur 
a dangerous risk in bringing it under cultivation. In ninety- 
nine cases out of a hundred the landowner is a better judge 
of his land than the general public, and he is also more anxious 
to get the most he can out of it ; and therefore, although in 
one or two exceptional instances some little good might result 
from these compulsory purchases, in the great majority of cases 
the nation would be a loser, and food if raised at all on such 
land would be sold at a loss. At the same time it should 
be pointed out, that between the aim of this Bill and the 
aim of nationalisationists there is a fundamental difference of 
principle. 

I do not know whether it is worth while to criticise in 
detail the arguments of this school. I am not sure that there 
are any arguments common to them all or to a majority of 
them. The truth is that " land nationalisationist " is a term 
applied to a great many very different classes of doctrinaires, 
some of whom have definite notions of what they want, whilst 
others have no clear aim beyond that of upsetting the existing 
system and, if possible, transferring wealth from the pockets 
of landowners into their own. Probably this is the leading 
idea in the minds of nine-tenths of those who dub themselves 
by this appellation. On the other hand, I should be the last 
to affirm, because the majority of any party are dishonest or 
illogical or both, that therefore the thinkers and leaders of that 
party are equally dishonest or illogical. I know there are 
men who sincerely believe that State ownership of the land 



IV WHA T IS PR OPER TY? 105 

But there is a stronger reason even than tliis in favour of 
what is unfortunately mis -called compulsory registration. 
Registration is undoubtedly in modern times the simplest and 
most perfect form of public notification. Third parties are 
frequently, nay almost invariably, interested in the transfer of 
land. How are these third parties to be apprised of the 
intended transfer by which their own rights may be seriously 
affected ? The old formalities of emancipation with the scales 
and the balance, the lihripens and the five witnesses, made a 
sufficient noise in a place the size of ancient Eome. So the 
formalities which accompanied livery of seisin, the number and 
importance of the persons present, the solemnity of the words 
and gestures of the feoffor, all contributed to render the transfer 
notorious in the neighbourhood. In Justinian's time, when 
res mandjpi had been absorbed by res nee mancipi and 
when traditio sufficed to transfer ownership ; and now in 
England, where a deed can be executed in a cupboard without 
the knowledge of interested persons who possibly reside in 
remote parts of the country ; the door is open to fraud. . We 
cannot come back to the beating of boundaries, the blowing of 
trumpets, and the thrashing of boys and priests at the land- 
marks ; but we can make use of a louder trumpet than any 
known to our forefathers — the public register, supported by the 
public press. With such an instrument in our hands, it is 
simply criminal to neglect it. A Bill for withdrawing State 
recognition from unregistered land -transfers should speedily 
become law, and so increase the liberty of Englishmen. 

Fourthly, it is alleged by the opponents of a separate 
system of land ownership that the landowner pockets — what ? 
The unearned increment ? Surely this phrase expresses the 
most extraordinary piece of illogical confusion that could well 
have been palmed off upon a semi -intelligent public by so 
honest and clear-headed a thinker as John Stuart Mill. How 
he could have brought himself to talk about unearned incre- 
ment as he did, is one of those riddles with which Genius every 
now and then puzzles us. Unearned increment simply means 
the reward of successful risk. Two men invest a sum of 
money each in a piece of land. A in this, and B in that. 
One plot turns out a success and the other a failure ; you turn 



io8 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

that in taking a seven years' average (as is done by the Bill) of 
the rents received from such land, it would be necessary in all 
justice to estimate the rental which the landlord virtually pays 
to himself for the use of his land for sporting purposes, and it 
seems to me that even if an actual rent was required it would 
be very easy for landowners to evade the law by renting each 
other's lands at their proper valuation for sporting purposes. 
We are driven to inquire whether Mr. Bradlaugh proposes to 
forbid the use of land by the owner for this purpose, or for 
any other purpose than that of food -producing. Whenever 
land is left in the natural state, because in the opinion of its 
owner it would be unprofitable to cultivate it, we may be sure 
that even if the State got it for nothing at all it would incur 
a dangerous risk in bringing it under cultivation. In ninety- 
nine cases out of a hundred the landowner is a better judge 
of his land than the general public, and he is also more anxious 
to get the most he can out of it ; and therefore, although in 
one or two exceptional instances some little good might result 
from these compulsory purchases, in the great majority of cases 
the nation would be a loser, and food if raised at all on such 
land would be sold at a loss. ■ At the same time it should 
be pointed out, that between the aim of this Bill and the 
aim of nationalisationists there is a fundamental difference of 
principle. 

I do not know whether it is worth while to criticise in 
detail the arguments of this school. I am not sure that there 
are any arguments common to them all or to a majority of 
them. The truth is that " land nationalisationist " is a term 
applied to a great many very different classes of doctrinaires, 
some of whom have definite notions of what they want, whilst 
others have no clear aim beyond that of upsetting the existing 
system and, if possible, transferring wealth from the pockets 
of landowners into their own. Probably this is the leading 
idea in the minds of nine-tenths of those who dub themselves 
by this appellation. On the other hand, I should be the last 
to affirm, because the majority of any party are dishonest or 
illogical or both, that therefore the thinkers and leaders of that 
party are equally dishonest or illogical. I know there are 
men who sincerely believe that State ownership of the land 



IV WHA T IS PR OPER TY? 109 

would be for the public benefit. These are not the men who 
would dismiss the landlords without compensation on the 
ground that they are no better than robbers ; they recognise 
the great difficulty of transferring the land from its present 
owner to the State without doing injustice on the one hand, 
or crippling the national resources on the other. I am dis- 
posed to agree with them thus far, that if their ultimate 
object were desirable, the process might be effected without 
either of the two evils dreaded. But we disagree as to the 
desirability of the end, no matter how brought about. I 
contend that even if the landowners of this country presented 
their acres to the people as a free gift, one of two things would 
happen. The gift would turn out a white elephant and would 
cost the State untold millions, or a new race of proprietors 
would take the place of those who had retired. State owner- 
ship of land, in the sense in which ownership is properly under- 
stood, has never worked satisfactorily yet, and it never will. 
If by ownership we choose to mean something different from 
what we usually mean by the term, there is no particular 
reason why we should not reply that the State is already the 
owner of the land. What I here mean by property and also 
by ownership is the bundle of indefinite rights over anything 
after all definite rights have been deducted ; and it is these 
indefinite rights which individuals know how to enjoy and how 
to turn to account, and which the State would necessarily 
either waste or abuse. 

There is one argument vulgarly used against what is called 
landlordism which deserves notice for no other reason than that 
it is frequently employed by dishonest agitators in addressing the 
working classes in this country. It is said that the land is 
held by those whose ancestors came by it unjustly. Some 
estates are still held, as they point out, by those whose 
ancestors won them by the sword; others by those whose 
ancestors received them as favours from the king; others 
again are said to have been purchased with ill-gotten wealth 
wrung from the oppressed tax-payers. It is further urged that 
these present landowners can have no just title to land acquired 
in this way. Highly-coloured pictures of the wrongs inflicted 
upon the people by the ancestors of landlords are drawn in 



112 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

citizen without any other consideration for his feelings than 
the allowance of full compensation. 

Even the orthodox Blackstone himself seems to have some 
misgiving as to the natural justice of the institution of property. 

" Pleased as we are," says he, " with the possession, we seem afraid to 
look back to the means by which it was acquired, as if fearful of some 
defect in our title ; or at best we rest satisfied with the decision of the 
laws in our favour without examining the reason or authority upon which 
those laws have been built. We think it enough that our title is derived 
by the grant of the former proprietor by descent from our ancestors or by 
the last will and testament of the dying owner ; not caring to reflect that 
there is no foundation in nature or in natural law why a set of words 
upon parchment should convey the dominion of lands ; why the son 
should have a right to exclude his fellow creatures from a determinate 
spot of ground because his father had done so before him ; or why the 
occupier of a particular field or of a jewel, when lying on his deathbed, 
and no longer able to maintain possession, should be entitled to tell the 
rest of the world which of them should enjoy it after him. These inquiries, 
it must be owned, would be useless and even troublesome in common life. 
It is well if the mass of mankind will obey the laws when made, without 
scrutinising too nicely the reasons of making them." 

He then tries to find some adequate justification for the 
institution of private property, and he finally adopts, as the 
best and strongest, the theory of Grotius. I do not know 
whether it has been pointed out that Blackstone's explanation 
of the origin of property is borrowed bodily from the Be, jure 
belli et pads without a word of acknowledgment, but those 
who compare the two will see that it is. He adopts Grrotius's 
theory of an original title from the Creator as recorded in the 
first chapter of Genesis ; he makes the same statement 
as to primitive institutions ; the same reference to the 
manners of the semi-civilised races of America ; and the very 
same quotation from Justinian — " erant omnia communia 
et indivisa omnibus, veluti unum cunctis patrimonium 
esset." 

Turning to Grotius himself we find that he also had his 
doubts as to the unholy origin of the institution. He says : 
" There we learn what was the cause why men departed from 
the community of things, first of movables, then of immov- 
ables ; namely, because when they were not content to feed on 
spontaneous produce, to dwell in caves, to go naked, or clothed 



IV WHAT IS PROPERTY 'i 109 

would be for the public benefit. These are not the men who 
would dismiss the landlords without compensation on the 
ground that they are no better than robbers ; they recognise 
the great difficulty of transferring the land from its present 
owner to the State without doing injustice on the one hand, 
or crippling the national resources on the other. I am dis- 
posed to agree with them thus far, that if their ultimate 
object were desirable, the process might be effected without 
either of the two evils dreaded. But we disagree as to the 
desirability of the end, no matter how brought about. I 
contend that even if the landowners of this country presented 
their acres to the people as a free gift, one of two things would 
happen. The gift would turn out a white elephant and would 
cost the State untold millions, or a new race of proprietors 
would take the place of those who had retired. State owner- 
ship of land, in the sense in which ownership is properly under- 
stood, has never worked satisfactorily yet, and it never will. 
If by ownership we choose to mean something different from 
what we usually mean by the term, there is no particular 
reason why we should not reply that the State is already the 
owner of the land. "What I here mean by property and also 
by ownership is the bundle of indefinite rights over anything 
after all definite rights have been deducted ; and it is these 
indefinite rights which individuals know how to enjoy and how 
to turn to account, and which the State would necessarily 
either waste or abuse. 

There is one argument vulgarly used against what is called 
landlordism which deserves notice for no other reason than that 
it is frequently employed by dishonest agitators in addressing the 
working classes in this country. It is said that the land is 
held by those whose ancestors came by it unjustly. Some 
estates are still held, as they point out, by those whose 
ancestors won them by the sword; others by those whose 
ancestors received them as favours from the king ; others 
again are said to have been purchased with ill-gotten wealth 
wrung from the oppressed tax-payers. It is further urged that 
these present landowners can have no just title to land acquired 
in this way. Highly-coloured pictures of the wrongs inflicted 
upon the people by the ancestors of landlords are drawn in 



112 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

citizen without any other consideration for his feelings than 
the allowance of full compensation. 

Even the orthodox Blackstone himself seems to have some 
misgiving as to the natural justice of the institution of property. 

" Pleased as we are," says lie, " with the possession, we seem afraid to 
look back to the means by which it was acquired, as if fearful of some 
defect in our title ; or at best we rest satisfied with the decision of the 
laws in our favour without examining the reason or authority upon which 
those laws have been built. We think it enough that our title is derived 
by the grant of the former proprietor by descent from our ancestors or by 
the last will and testament of the dying owner ; not caring to reflect that 
there is no foundation in nature or in natural law why a set of words 
upon parchment should convey the dominion of lands ; why the son 
should have a right to exclude his fellow creatures from a determinate 
spot of ground because his father had done so before him ; or why the 
occupier of a particular field or of a jewel, when lying on his deathbed, 
and no longer able to maintain possession, should be entitled to tell the 
rest of the world which of them should enjoy it after him. These inquiries, 
it must be owned, would be useless and even troublesome in common life. 
It is well if the mass of mankind will obey the laws when made, without 
scrutinising too nicely the reasons of making them." 

He then tries to find some adequate justification for the 
institution of private property, and he finally adopts, as the 
best and strongest, the theory of Grotius. I do not know 
whether it has been pointed out that Blackstone's explanation 
of the origin of property is borrowed bodily from the Be jure 
'belli et pads without a word of acknowledgment, but those 
who compare the two will see that it is. He adopts Grotius's 
theory of an original title from the Creator as recorded in th'e 
first chapter of Genesis ; he makes the same statement 
as to primitive institutions ; the same reference to the 
manners of the semi-civilised races of America ; and the very 
same quotation from Justinian — " erant omnia communia 
et indivisa omnibus, veluti unum cunctis patrimonium 
esset." 

Turning to Grotius himself we find that he also had his 
doubts as to the unholy origin of the institution. He says : 
" There we learn what was the cause why men departed from 
the community of things, first of movables, then of immov- 
ables ; namely, because when they were not content to feed on 
spontaneous produce, to dwell in caves, to go naked, or clothed 



IV WHAT IS PROPERTY 'I , 113 

in bark or in skins, but had sought a more exquisite kind of 
living, there was need of industry wliich particular persons 
might employ on particular things. And as to the common 
use of the fruits of the earth, it was prevented by the disper- 
sion of men into different localities and by the want of justice, 
and kindness which interfered with a fair division of labour 
and sustenance, and thus we learn how things became 
property." 

While views like these can be entertained by men whom 
it would be an impertinence even to compare with the talkers 
self-styled land nationalisationists, it is fair to admit that the 
arguments of the latter receive material support from the 
writings of these recognised authorities. But it should also 
be pointed out that while these arguments are deemed sufficient 
to warrant the most positive dogmatism on the part of shallow 
politicians, Mr. Spencer himself draws from them the most 
hesitating and doubting conclusions. "It may be doubted," 
says he, " whether the final stage is at present reached." 
Again, speaking of the assimilation of real and personal pro- 
perty, he says, " the assimilation may eventually be denied ;" 
and again he suggests that " at a stage still more advanced, it 
may he that private ownership of land will disappear," and he 
concludes, in a passage already quoted, that the revival of prim- 
itive ownership of land by the community " seems possible." 
The whole of the chapter forecasting the future of property 
in land bristles with such qualifying expressions as " perhaps," 
" it may be," " it seems possible," " it may be doubted," and such- 
like admissions of hesitation and uncertainty. The chapter on 
Property in his volume Political Institutions concludes thus : 

" There is reason to suspect that while private possession of things 
produced by labour will grow even more definite and sacred than at 
present, the inhabited area which cannot be produced by labour will 
eventually be distinguished as something which may not be privately 
possessed. As the individual, primitively owner of himself, partially or 
wholly loses ownership of himself during the militant regime, but gradu- 
ally resumes it as the industrial regime develops, so possibly the com- 
munal proprietorship of land, partially or wholly merged in the ownership 
of dominant men during evolution of the militant type, will be resumed 
as the industrial type becomes fully evolved," 

I have said before, and I say now, that in my opinion 

I 



114 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

all this doubt and difficulty would have disappeared from 
Mr. Spencer's mind if he had thoroughly appreciated the 
definition of property given by Austin as the result of his 
profound analysis of the term. 

The very notion of property involves, as I have said, the 
distinct contemplation of two factors — a thing owned, and a 
person owning. I have hitherto dealt with differences in the 
nature of things owned. We will now look at the subject 
from the other point of view. 

To begin with, the owner must either be one, or more 
than one. If more than one, the persons owning must be 
determinate persons, that is to say, persons who can be singled 
out and pointed to. If this cannot be done the question 
arises, Who are the owners ? and who is to forbid third persons 
from exercising the rights of proprietorship ? For example, 
who are the owners of what is usually described as the 
property of the Church of England ? Does it belong to any 
determinate persons ? Can they be singled out ? ^N'o one 
supposes that the mere officials of that body can be regarded 
as the owners, but if the bishops and clergy are not the owners, 
who are ? Writing upon this subject John Stuart Mill says : 

" Would yon. rob the Church. % it is asked, and at the sound of these 
words rise up images of rapine, violence, phmder ; and every sentiment 
of repugnance which would be excited by a proposal to take away from 
an individual the earnings of his toil, or the inheritance of his fathers, 
comes heightened in the particular case by the added idea of sacrilege. 
But the Church ! Who is the Church ? Who is it that we desire to 
rob ? Who are the persons whose property, whose rights, we are proposing 
to take away ? Not the clergy ; from them we do not propose to take 
anything. To every man who now benefits by the endowments we would 
leave his entire income. But if not the clergy, surely we are not pro- 
posing to rob the laity ; we are exhorting the laity to claim their property 
out of the hands of the clergy who are not the Church, but only the 
managing members of the association." 

Clearly, unless there are definite persons to vindicate the 
rights of ownership, there is nothing to prevent any other 
persons from exercising such rights, except the State itself. But 
what is the ground for State interference, unless it be that the 
State regards itself as the owner, or acts as the defender 
of the rights of certain determinate citizens ? That the 



IV WHA T IS PROPER TY ? 115 

Church is a corporate body, with rights as well defined as 
those of other corporate bodies, seems to be an exploded idea, 
even amongst its supporters. The fundamental conception of 
the Church of England which is constantly put forward by 
the advocates of disestablishment, says Lord Selborne, " is that 
of a State church — a political creation — a church called into 
existence by the State, and deriving from the State the 
essential law of its being." " But," says the author of the 
learned but unsatisfactory Defence of the Church of England, 
" I do not and cannot take my stand upon any mystical view, 
such e.g. as that the Church is a person with a corporate 
conscience cognisant of matters of religion." Lord Selborne's 
own view of the Church is a singularly inadequate one. He 
says : " The Church is a society placed by its divine Founder 
in the world, though the spirit by which it is or ought to be 
actuated is not of the world." I do not propose to follow 
him through his elaborate argument to prove the identity of 
the Church before and after the Eeformation. I do not care 
whether it was the Church of Eome or the Church of England 
of which the rights and liberties were declared to be inviol- 
able by King John's great Charter, confirmed by Henry III. I 
care nothing at all for the decretals ascribed to Isidore, Arch- 
bishop of Seville, upon which the entire edifice of mediaeval 
and modern papal supremacy was built up. I care no more 
for the origin of Church property, than I do for the origin of 
the Irish landowner's property. The question for us is a 
present-day question. If we are asked to respect the pro- 
prietary rights of the Church of England, we have nothing to 
do with ancient history, or with titles buried in oblivion ; all 
we have to do is to find out, who, if any, are the persons 
claiming the property. The difficulty is only removed one 
step farther back by the modern churchman's device of dis- 
claiming proprietary rights on behalf of the Church as a whole, 
and reclaiming them on behalf of limbs and branches of the 
Church in local areas. " In regard to all land endowments," 
says Dean Plumptree, " the facts are so plain that he who 
runs may read them. They were given or bequeathed by the 
Crown, or individual proprietors, not to the Church at large, 
for the Church at large has never been a corporate society 



ii6 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

capable of holding property, but to abbeys or cathedrals 
which were corporate bodies with that capacity, or to the 
rectors and vicars of parishes as corporations sole." Again, 
Professor Freeman says : " People talk as if the Church pro- 
perty was the property of one vast corporation called the 
Church. In truth, it is simply the property of several local 
churches, the ecclesiastical corporations sole and aggregate, 
bishops, chapters, rectors, and vicars, or any other. The Church 
of England, as a single body, has no property ; the property 
belongs to the Church of Canterbury, the Church of West- 
minster, the Church of Little Pedlington, or any other. These 
local bodies, forming corporations sole or aggregate, hold estates 
which have been acquired at sundry times and in divers 
manners from the first preaching of Christianity to the English 
till now." As I have said, this only goes to shift the question 
a step farther back. Wlio and what is the rector or vicar or 
other corporation sole ? In what sense can such a corporation 
hold property, or vindicate his proprietary rights against the 
invasion of third persons ? Kobody pretends that the Eev. 
John Smith is really the owner of the property vested in the 
rector, even though the Eev. John Smith himself happens to 
be the rector. Then to whom does the property really and 
truly belong ? To his parishioners ? Certainly not. Church- 
men are the first to deny that the parishioners, as such, have 
any claim. " It is only," say they, " those of the parishioners 
who are members of the Church of England," and so we are 
driven back to the original question. Who are the members 
of the Church of England ? Those who having begun life as 
members of that religious body have since joined other denom- 
inations, or thrown off allegiance to religion in any of its forms ? 
Those who regularly accept the ministrations of the Church — 
possibly, in many cases, with a view to business and credit ? 
Those who profess the Creed and are ready to subscribe the 
Thirty-nine Articles of the Church, either fully, or " to a certain 
limited extent " ? But it is useless to ask any further 
questions ; everybody knows that it is practically impossible 
to point out any determinate persons who constitute the 
Church of England as a whole, or the Church of Canterbury, 
of Westminster, or of Little Pedlington in particular. 



IV WHAT IS PROPERTY 1 117 

It is no solution of the problem to say that the Church 
property is held in trust. The further question at once arises, 
Who are the beneficiaries ? Let us look into the title of the 
Church to one particular kind of property which is claimed on 
its behalf, namely, tithes. This will reduce the scope of our 
inquiry to within reasonable limits. I confess that the habit 
of seeking for the origin of titles in antedeluvian or prehistoric 
times seems to me both unsatisfactory and mischievous. 
Those who defend the claim of the Church to this kind of 
property usually begin their defence with a reference to 
Leviticus, " If a man will at all redeem aught of his tithes, he 
shall add thereto the fifth part thereof." Then follows a 
terrible denunciation of those who would abolish tithes, or who 
would attempt to curtail them. " Will a man rob God ? Yet 
ye have robbed me. But ye say. Wherein have we robbed 
thee ? In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with a curse : for 
ye have robbed me, even this whole nation." As a recent writer 
naively remarks, these words of Malachi " are rather serious in 
this matter." He goes on to wonder whether w^e in England 
are not under the curse. Says he : " Whether it has ever 
occurred to the grumblers of the present day, in the period of 
agricultural depression, that some of this depression is a little 
owing to the outcry against tithes, we will not now stop to 
inquire." From Malachi we are brought 'per salticm to 
Edmund, King of England, who levied a church-rent of corn. 
Then Ethelred made laws in a jumble of Latin and Anglo- 
Saxon which it is not easy to construe. But one decree stands 
clearly out, " Let every man pay his tithes justly." But what 
is justly ? Next comes a copy of the laws of Edward the 
Confessor, which specify the subjects of tithes — corn, foals, 
calves, cheese, lambs, wool, butter, pigs, honey, "moreover of 
woods, meadows, waters, mills, parks, warrens, fishings, coppices, 
orchards, and negotiations, and all things which the Lord hath 
given." This law, which was successively confirmed by 
William L, Henry L, Henry II., and Henry III., is really 
important as showing conclusively that it was originally 
intended in this country to levy tithes on commerce, as well as 
on agricultural produce. " Negotiations " do not seem to count 
for much against the long list of farm and forest produce, but 



ii8 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

for what they were worth, there they are. Why, asks the 
farmer, should our produce be the only kind which has been 
unable to shake off this encumbrance ? There was nothing 
unjust, nothing wrong, nothing inexpedient in thus taxing the 
people for what was then thought to be their spiritual welfare. 
Those who would not voluntarily give their share of the cost 
of a public necessary were compelled to do so. So long as 
tenths were paid to the State Church or Church State (for 
they were one and indivisible) no fault can be found with the 
arrangement. The evil began when benefices became ap- 
propriated to particular abbeys, priories, etc. From this step 
there was no natural halting -place till lay impropriators 
appeared on the scenes. Thus was a tax with a specific object 
gradually converted into a species of private property. "When 
the monasteries were suppressed, the tithes, of course, passed 
to the State (the king) who, from time to time, made infenda- 
tion of them into lay hands, and the thing was done. The 
question for us to-day is. Are tithes taxes, or are they private 
property ? Are tithe-owners, like zemindars, to be regarded 
as persons having real rights in the soil, or as mere collectors 
of taxes for a given purpose ? 

If we regard them as tax-collectors, then I cannot agree 
with those who contend that tithe commutation is justified by 
events, both from a moral and an economic point of view. 
The clergy say they have been rendered more independent of 
their flocks and are no longer brought so much into collision 
with them in ascertaining the amount of their demands. 
Surely this is precisely what is not wanted. To render one's 
servants independent of oneself is but a poor policy. The 
removal of the friction of collection simply means the removal 
of the knowledge of the impost. The objection to indirect 
taxation applies here also. If the people do not feel the tax, 
they begin to forget it. When the object of the tax is gone 
or is no longer needed they forget to demand its remission. 
This is an unhealthy state of the public mind. The evil of a 
tax should be distinctly felt, and willingly borne for the sake 
of the good which is seen to result from it. Looking at tithes 
from the opposite standpoint, that is to say, as private 
property, it is clear that the corporations sole in whom the 



IV WHAT IS PROPERTY'^ 119 

rent-charge is vested would be justified at any time in ceasing 
their ministrations and in sitting down in the full enjoyment 
of their income. And why should they not ? If these cor- 
porations actually own property, it is no business of yours or 
of mine to dictate how it shall be used. A's ancestor held 
land from his lord on condition that he would supply men and 
arms on occasion, and perform other military services. B's 
ancestor held land on condition that he would minister to the 
spiritual welfare of the neighbourhood, and see after the poor 
and destitute. A's successors now hold the same land 
unconditionally, and why should not B's successors do the 
same ? The only answer forthcoming is, Because they don't ; 
and the rejoinder is. Perhaps they may come to do so. There 
is no middle course between these two. !N'o one can doubt 
that originally tithes were a species of tax. Difference of 
opinion enters in when the question is asked, whether they 
have since at any time hardened into a species of private 
property. This was actually the case with the land-tax in 
Bengal and in many other Eastern countries. It was the case 
in England when, after the suppression of the monasteries, 
certain tithes passed into the hands of the predecessors of the 
present lay impropriators. Here again we cannot go into 
ancient titles ; we have nothing to do with the right or wrong 
of Henry VIII.'s policy. The lay impropriators of the present 
day, as a juridical fact, have an indisputable claim to their 
tithe rent-charge against all the world ; a real right which 
cannot be questioned or curtailed without flagrant injustice 
and spoliation. Their title is as good and valid as that of any 
other person having a first charge on the land, and as their 
property is held unconditionally, and in no respect ex contractu, 
the lay impropriator's claim is not contingent on the per- 
formance of duties. His rights are on all -fours with the 
rights of the landowner himself, and his cause is but 
weakened by binding it up with the cause of the ecclesiastical 
tithe-owner. In short, there can be no doubt whatever that in 
their case what was once a tax on agriculture and commerce 
has become hardened and consolidated by time into uncon- 
ditioned private property. This process might also have been 
completed in the case of clerical tithe-owners, but it has not. 



120 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

Tlie conditions still hold, and the State or public still claims 
the right to certain services (definable from time to time by 
the State) in consideration of the tithe rent -charge. This 
claim has been reaffirmed over and over again in onr own 
day. If the public needed to reconsider the nature of the 
services to be required, it is quite possible that the ec- 
clesiastical tithe rent-charge might fall into other keeping. It 
is also conceivable that these charges might eventually harden 
into private property if left unmolested ; but it is difficult to 
see how this is to be effected unless certain indeterminate bodies 
come to be identified, defined, and determined. They can 
never become capable otherwise of holding property. It is 
opposed to the juridical principles of all law. 

There is a simple explanation of the difficulty which most 
people seem to labour under in recognising that tithes are a 
species of tax. Tithes are levied on a particular class of 
property and expended on a particular public object ; whereas 
most taxes are expended, as occasion requires, on any public 
object. The reason why this tax is levied on a particular kind 
of property is, that there was originally hardly any other kind 
of property to tax, at least none worth taxing — although, as I 
have said, commerce was actually included at first under the 
head of negotiations ; but " negotiators " soon gave the priest 
the slip. Not so the farmer, rooted as he was to the soil. It 
was the gradually increasing independence of the Church in 
Plantagenet times which brought about the specific allocation 
of this tax. Tithes originally resembled the land-tax collected 
by the zemindars of Bengal and the Turkish tax-farmers — a 
tax levied for the welfare of the people, but collected by 
special officials to whom the particular function was entrusted 
by the State. Like all taxes of this class it necessarily tended 
to harden into the private property of the tax-gatherer. Such 
is the natural and inevitable consequence of adopting this 
mode *of raising revenue. In the case of the zemindars and of 
the English lay impropriators the process, as I have said, has 
long ago been completed and the State must recognise 
accomplished facts. It would be a gross breach of faith to 
question the proprietary rights of these classes ; but clerical 
tithes have never been hardened into property. The con- 



IV WHA T IS PR OPER TY? 121 

tractual nature of the clerical tithe-owners' claim is patent to 
all ; it is not even a transferable right, it is simply a payment 
for current services rendered. Moreover, no determinate 
person, individual or corporate, can be pointed to as the owner. 
Except for services rendered, tithes are not even claimed by 
the so-called tithe -owner. As to the services required they 
are not sufficiently definite, but there is one feature in 
them worth noting ; they have been defined and modified by 
the legislature and may be again. Then it must be admitted 
that the people might without injustice turn to the ecclesiastics 
and say, " We no longer require the kind of services you have 
hitherto rendered us," just as they might say and do say to the 
dockyard labourers. " We shall," they might add, " either devote 
the proceeds of the tax to some other object, or, as is usual when 
the object of a tax or rate ceases to be an object, remit it 
altogether." A war tax of twopence in the pound on incomes 
is remitted if there is no war, and no one says, Why not spend 
it on the schools ? However this is a question of policy into 
which we need not enter here. The one point I wish to 
emphasise is, that the position of the ecclesiastical tithe-owner 
in no respect resembles that of the lay impropriator. They 
had, it is true, the same origin, but they have become 
completely differentiated, and have now little left in common 
beyond a common origin. If we rashly proceed to act upon a 
view of the Church's position based on ancient title-deeds, we 
must not be surprised if our nationalisationist friends likewise 
claim to dip into ancient history for a justification of the 
proprietory rights of landowners. Our business is to examine 
the present position juridically, and to leave the origin of all 
rights to the antiquarian and to the historian. Let us beware 
of confounding together rights which, though bearing similar 
names and having similar origins, fall, when juridically 
analysed, into very different classes. 

I do not wish to be understood as offering any opinion 
whatever on the policy of the Bills which have recently been 
introduced into Parliament dealing with tithes. I am inclined 
to think that the proposed change in the system of tithe- 
collection is calculated to perpetuate what are called the rights 
of the Church rather than to safeguard in their integrity the 



122 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

rights of the clergy. The Church is to the jurist, as we have 
seen, a myth ; a figment of the imagination ; a name and 
nothing more. But the clergy are real and substantial beings, 
with rights and duties like other mortals, and any tampering 
with their reasonable expectations, as guaranteed by the laws 
and customs of this realm, would be a gross injustice and a 
national disgrace. Notice to the present clerical tithe-receiver 
that he will have no successor could injure nobody. He has 
himself worked and invested capital in qualifying for the post 
of spiritual teacher, and cannot be robbed of his reward by any 
honest means. Even if tithes were altogether remitted it 
would be as necessary to make full compensation as it was 
when purchase was abolished in the army. Vested interests 
may perhaps be defined as rights based not upon contract but 
upon custom. Even when the State has expressly repudiated 
the permanent obligation of paying certain salaries, it has 
found itself morally compelled to make compensation to those 
who have been deprived of livelihood by the abolition of offices 
which had come to be generally regarded as permanent. 

But if we are justified by ancient custom in recognising 
rights which have no basis in law, it may be contended that 
we are justified in recognising obligations similarly based on 
immemorial custom. Agriculturists who have paid tithes for 
over a thousand years may be said to have a vested obligation 
to continue those payments, and it is no hardship upon farmers 
or upon landowners, who have come into their present position 
with their eyes open, to ask them to continue their contri- 
butions to the public Treasury. It may be urged that so far 
as the tithe-payer is concerned, it would not be actually unjust 
to go on levying tithes, and that it would not be unjust to 
remit them. This is true of all taxation. Putting the Church 
as a fictitious person altogether out of view, the existing clergy 
as individuals have a right either to the continuance of their 
offices for their " lifetime or to full compensation. This claim 
might be met, and a considerable reduction simultaneously 
made, in the tax called tithes, whereby no human being would 
be mulcted. The pressure on agriculture would be temporarily 
relieved, and justice would be done all round. I have entered 
thus fully into the tithe question because it illustrates the 



IV WHAT IS PROPERTY? 123 

doctrine of property in relation to the person owning. From 
this point of view the several kinds of Church property stand 
in the same position. 

Even admitting that the independence of personal belief 
from State interference is the final outcome of social evolution, 
admitting that this nation is already ripe for the advance, I 
think many persons calling themselves liberationists are apt to 
lose sight of the main conditions of its achievement. It cannot 
be laid down too early or too emphatically that in carrying 
out the work, true proprietary rights must be held absolutely 
inviolate. Your pound of flesh, but not one drop of blood. 
Nothing can be more unreasonable or more unjust than to 
protest against the application of public monies to improper 
purposes, and at the same time to clamour for the expropria- 
tion of a certain class of citizens. Those who protest against 
taxation for spiritual purposes on the ground that it is wrong 
to rob an individual even for the public good are for ever 
barred from demanding the confiscation of the incomes of a 
class, even for the public good. If disendowment is to be 
brought about, it must be done without rendering one single 
member of the Established Church a penny the poorer. That 
is a sine qiia non. Perhaps the strongest argument for post- 
poning the practical consideration of the question for some 
time is that the true definition of property has not yet come 
to be recognised by our laws. 

The consequence is, that much misunderstanding exists as 
to what is corporate property. Cases of bequests to indeter- 
minate persons abound, and a careful examination of the 
various and conflicting decisions of our judges goes to show 
that English jurisprudence is hardly yet equal to the task of 
dealing with this great question without doing moral injustice. 
Mill, who could not withhold a tribute of admiration for the 
great individualist Turgot, somewhat immodestly apologises for 
him for opposing foundations. "Notwithstanding our deep 
reverence for this illustrious man," he writes, " and the great 
weight which is due to his sentiments on all subjects which 
he had maturely considered, we must regard .his opinion on 
this subject as one of what it is now allowable to call the 
prejudices of his age." It might have been allowable fifty 



124 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

years ago (Mill wrote on Church Property in 1833), but to-day 
the best thinkers are in line with Turgot, and are inclined to 
apologise for Mill, whose opinion on this subject, at least, may 
clearly be set down as due to the prejudice of the age in which 
lie, wrote. " Turgot and his friends," said he, " seem to have 
conceived the perfection of political society to be reached, if 
man could but be compelled to abstain from injuring man, not 
considering that men need help as well as forbearance, and 
that nature is to the greater number a severer taskmaster, even 
than man is to man. They left each individual to fight his 
own battle against fate and necessity with little aid from his 
fellow-men, save what he might purchase in open market and 
pay for." Could the individualists' position be more clearly 
defined • to-day so far as the perfection of 'political society is 
concerned ? Mill's notion of a state which should help the 
individual to " fight against necessity " is a little out of harmony 
with the scientific thought of our day. His famous article on 
Corporation and Church Property is doubtless an able contri- 
bution to the discussion, but its weakness is its embodiment 
of socialist principles in reaction from the apparently hard 
individualism of Turgot. 

In applying the principle of let-be to practical politics it 
is necessary to make a thorough and searching analysis of 
juridical terms, and of these the chief is the term Property. 
When this has been done, we shall, I think, without impugning 
the probity of such thinkers as Proudhon, find ourselves in 
harmony with the views expressed by Bastiat in his celebrated 
vindication of proprietary rights. 

" Men of property and leisure ! Whence come the fears which have 
seized upon you ! The perfumed but poisoned breath of Utopia menaces 
your existence. You are loudly told that the fortune you have amassed 
for the purpose of securing a little repose in your old age, and food, 
instruction, and a start in life for your children, has been acquired by 
you at the expense of your brethren ; that you have placed yourselves 
between the gifts of nature and the poor ; that, like greedy tax-gatherers, 
you have levied a tribute on these gifts, under the names of property, 
interest, and rent. You are called upon for restitution ; and what 
augments your terror is, that your advocates in conducting your defence 
feel themselves too often compelled to avow that your usurpation is 
flagrant but that it is necessary. Such accusations I meet with a direct 
and emphatic negative. You have not intercepted the gifts of nature. 



IV WHAT IS PROPERTY 1 125 

You have received them, it is true, at the hands of nature, but you have 
also transferred them to your brethren without receiving anything. What 
you have received is simply a recompense for your efforts and by no 
means the price of the gifts of nature. Such property is legitimate and 
unassailable ; no Utopia can prevail against it, for it enters into the very 
constitution of our being. No theory can ever succeed in blighting it, or 
in shaking it. 

" Men of toil and privation ! you cannot shut your eyes to the truth 
that the primitive condition of the race is that of a perfect equality of 
poverty and ignorance \ man redeems himself from this state by the sweat 
of his brow, and directs his course towards another equality, that of 
material prosperity, knowledge, and moral dignity. The progress of men 
is unequal indeed, and you could not complain even though the rapid 
march of the vanguard were in some measure to retard your own advances. 
But, in truth, it is quite the reverse. No ray of light penetrates a single 
mind without in some degree enlightening yours. No step of progress, 
even though prompted by the conscious striving for property, but it is a 
step of progress for you. No wealth is created which does not tend to 
enrich you ; no property is acquired which does not tend to enlarge your 
own liberties. For the order of things is so arranged that no man can 
work honestly for himself without at the same time working for all. 

" Men of philanthropy ! Lovers of equality ! Blind defenders of 
the suffering classes ! You who look forward to the reign of community 
in this world, why in your pride do you seek to subjugate men's wills 
and bring them under the yoke of your own inventions ? Do you not 
see that this community after which you sigh has been already attained 
and provided for by nature ? Has nature need either of your conceptions 
or of your violence ? Do you not see that this community is being 
realised day by day, in virtue of its admirable decrees ; that the execution 
of these decrees has not been entrusted to your hap-hazard services and 
puerile tinkerings nor even to the increasing sympathy manifested in 
charity ; but that it has been entrusted to the most personal, the most 
permanent of all our energies — self-interest, a principle embedded in our 
inmost nature, which never flags and which never rests. Study then the 
social mechanism and you will find that it testifies to a universal harmony 
which far outstrips your dreams and chimeras. Instead of presumptuously 
offering to reconstruct the workmanship of nature, you will then, I trust, 
be content humbly to admire and to bless it." 

I have dwelt thus at length on land ownership and tithe 
ownership because these two forms of property may be said to 
be typical ; each of them indicating the limits by which any 
clear and logical definition is necessarily bounded. Thus the 
rights over the thing owned are not unlimited, and the person or 
persons owning must be determinate. Unfortunately these 
considerations are not always borne in mind even by lawyers. 
" Property," says Lord Mackenzie, " though naturally unlimited, 



126 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

is susceptible of important restrictions." To begin with, it 
never is unlimited ; and if it were, what ground have we for 
supposing that this is its natural form — whatever that may 
mean ? This confusion results from mistaking the indefinite 
for the limitless. 

Austin avoided this mistake, but perhaps in defining ^pro- 
perty as " a right over a determinate thing, indefinite in point 
of user, unrestricted in point of disposition, and unlimited in 
point of duration," we may doubt whether the two last qualifica- 
tions are not necessary accidentals in ninety-nine cases out of 
a hundred, rather than essentially connoted by the term. If 
I have the use of a pound of tea for six months, it is precious 
little that your reversion will be worth at the end of that period. 
If the tenant for life of a painting includes amongst his rights 
over it the right of burning it, we may just as well admit his 
right to be unlimited in point of time. And yet this is a mere 
accident. On the whole, Austin's maturer conclusion is that 
which I am inclined to adopt when he says, "I mean by 
property every right over a thing which is indefinite in point 
of user." And there he stops. This is the outcome of his 
analysis of property as the institution exists at the present day. 
History endorses this view. Savigny says that property is 
founded upon adverse possession ripened by prescription. Very 
likely ; it matters little what it was founded upon ; the ques- 
tion is. What is it when it has been founded ? Speaking of 
its origin Sir Henry Maine oddly says : " What mankind did in 
the primitive state may not be a hopeless subject of inquiry, 
but of their motives for doing it, it is impossible to know any- 
thing." Again he says : " It is not surprising that the first 
proprietor should have been the strong man armed who kept 
his goods in peace. But why it was that lapse of time created 
a sentiment of respect for his possession, which is the exact 
source of the universal reverence of mankind for that which 
has for a long period de facto existed, is a question really 
deserving the profoundest examination, but lying far beyond 
the boundary of our present inquiries." I cannot admit that the 
motives of our early ancestors are inscrutable, but I quite agree 
that the inquiry falls quite outside the province of the lawyer. 
Let land nationalisationists and antiquarians and meta- 



IV 



WHA T IS PROPER TY ? 127 



physicians and " agitators " argue out such questions as whether 
Adam's dominion over all the beasts of the field was a jus in rem 
or merely a jus ad rem acquirendam ; whether Malachi was 
inspired when he denounced those who neglected to pay their 
tithes ; whether the land of Great Britain originally belonged 
to the dolichocephalic troglodytes or to lake-dwellers with skulls 
like the Neanderthal specimen ; whether Colonel IN'orth of 
Leeds has an absolute right to pull down Kirkstall Abbey 
without the consent of the people of Leeds, or of Yorkshire, or 
of England, or of the British Empire. All these questions will 
continue to amuse and to enrage countless hosts of " thinkers " 
for years to come. The lawyer and the statesman and the 
jurist have nothing to do with them. And since, after all, the 
permanent laws of all countries are made by the wise men in 
those countries, perhaps the best thing common-sense people 
can do at the present time is to clear their heads and make 
up their minds what it is which they mean by property before 
shouting themselves hoarse with the Beccarias and Proudhons 
on the one side, or the Benthams and Bastiats on the other. 



CHAPTEE V 



WHAT IS CAPITAL 



What is Capital ? Surely many will complain that the con- 
ception is clearly defined already, or that the whole science of 
political economy must be rotten from the very foundation. 
" If the nature of capital be thoroughly understood," wrote Mr. 
John Macdonnel {Survey of Political Economy, 1871) "political 
economy is known alm^ost to the bottom ; almost all purely 
economical questions may be solved, and the greater part of 
future discussions consists of drawing deductions from the 
fundamental properties of capital. Its momentousness must, 
in the first place, be impressed upon the mind of every student 
of political economy. . Man without capital is as purely a 
fiction of the imagination as a line without breadth or a 
point without magnitude. It is as essential to the continuance 
of life as air. It is the breath of industry." 

If the term Capital conveys no definite meaning, of what a 
jargon must nearly all the problems and theorems of the so- 
called science consist ! In Mill's own words : " A branch may 
be diseased and all the rest healthy ; but unsoundness at the 
root diffuses unhealthiness through the whole tree." And it is 
in speaking of capital that this apt illustration is called forth. 
Consequently it behoves us to ascertain, first, whether the term 
really has one clear meaning, and secondly, whether it is used 
in the same sense by those whose works on the subject are 
studied. And in order to answer these questions let us begin 
by laying side by side two or three definitions of capital 
extracted from well-known works. In the Principles of 
Political Economy, by J. S. Mill, we find the following not 



CHAP. V WHAT IS CAPITAL ? 129 

very concise definition : " What capital does for production is 
to afford the shelter, protection, tools, and materials which the 
work requires, and to feed and otherwise maintain the labourers 
during the process. Whatever things are destined for this use 
— destined to supply productive labour with these various 
pre-requisites — are capital." 

In the Maniml of Political Economy, by Professor H. 
Fawcett, 1865, the following is the definition given: "The 
wealth which has been accumulated with the object of 
assisting production is termed capital ; and therefore the 
capital of the country is the wealth which is not immediately 
consumed unproductively, and which may, consequently, be 
devoted to assist the further production of wealth." This state- 
ment has not been materially altered in later editions. 

In a work entitled Political Economy for Plain People, by 
Mr. G. P. Scrope, 1873, it is written: "We should therefore 
define capital as that portion of movable stock which is employed 
or reserved for employment in production ; to which we would 
add (in order to avoid ambiguity as far as possible), with a 
view to profit hy the sale of its produce'' 

Mill's definition may be translated into a single proposition 
thus : " Whatever things are destined to supply productive 
labour with the shelter, protection, tools, and materials which 
the work requires, and to feed and otherwise maintain the 
labourers during the process, are capital." Scrope's 
definition already fulfils this desideratum, if the italics, 
which are his own, be read separately. But Fawcett's 
definition, though, to use his own words, " it is a wide defini- 
tion," will be found on closer inspection to be two wide 
definitions, of which the second embraces some things and 
excludes others not embraced and excluded by the first, 
although they are connected by the form used to indicate 
identical propositions. According to the first the intention of 
the accumulator constitutes an essential factor in the concep- 
tion. In the second the possible destiny of the wealth takes 
the place of the accumulator's intention. There is much 
wealth, which, though not accumulated with the olject 
of assisting production, nevertheless may be devoted to that 
purpose. Such wealth is capital according to the second 

K 



130 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

definition, but not capital according to the first. No doubt 
Fawcett was led to perpetrate this extraordinary non sequitur 
by the laudable desire to eliminate from the conception of 
capital that element of destiny which is so prominent in the 
definition of the great logician. We are enabled, he no doubt 
said to himself, with this clue to look back and declare pretty 
accurately what was capital so many years ago, and in 
so many years to come we shall be similarly able to decide 
what is capital to-day ; but by what conceivable process can 
we point to the things around us and say which are capital and 
which are not, if that depends entirely upon their destiny ? 
The eventual destiny of a thing is not necessarily coincident 
with the present intention of its possessor or of any one else ; 
but as the latter is ascertainable and the former is not, it shall 
be taken as the true test of capital. And then, perchance, 
after coming to this determination, there arose before the 
professor a vision of an old nobleman on the verge of the tomb, 
feeding his hunters on the oats that should make porridge for 
his labourers, with a thrifty son and heir looking on and 
biding his time ; and the object of the accumulator seemed a 
too nice distinction between capital and non-capital and so 
was superimposed the second not exactly complementary but 
rather optional mark. Now since it is quite possible and easy 
to say whether a given article may or may not by possibility 
be devoted to production, we have by means of these optional 
definitions really eliminated the metaphysical factor of destiny 
or fatality from the conception. And this is, we admit, very 
satisfactory, when lo ! here comes G-. Poulett Scrope and spoils the 
whole design, bringing back destiny in disguise. Disgusted 
with the professor's canny trick of producing one or other of 
his two definitions from his pocket as suits his convenience, 
under pretence that they are equivalent, Scrope rolls the 
two into one. Instead of this class or that class, he says 
both this class and that class are capital, both those things 
which are reserved for employment in production, and also those 
things which, whether so reserved or not, actually are so 
employed. It is almost a pity he did not substitute " may by 
possibility be employed " for " are employed." "We should so 
have bid farewell for ever to destiny. But alas ! what means 



V WHAT IS CAPITAL V 131 

that which is employed ? Of what particular thing can we say 
that it is employed in production ? Certainly not of any kind 
of so-called circulating capital. Here is a sack of oats. 
It certainly has not been employed in production, or it would 
not be oats, and as to whether it is to be so employed or not, it 
is impossible to predict with certainty : after all, it is again a 
question of destiny. 

So that, on the one hand, the wealth which, though 
intended for the purchase of luxury, is eventually rescued from 
destruction by some accident, such as the death of its possessor, 
and on the other hand, that which, though intended to assist 
the further production of wealth, stands an equal chance 
of being wasted, are both included under the head of 
capital. Heads I win, tails you lose ; in either case 
Poulett Scrope smiles on the wealth around him and dubs it 



Concerning this factor intention, Courcelle Seneuil 
writes {Traite d'Economie Politique, 1867, p. 49): " Comme 
notre definition du mot ' capital ' differe de celle qui 
est generalement admise, et qui a ete accreditee par les 
auteurs les plus respectables, il est necessaire de donner a ce 
sujet une courte explication. 'La plupart des economistes 
comprennent sous le nom commun de capital cette parti 
seulement des richesses existantes que ses possesseurs ont 
Vintention, de conserver ou de reproduire par I'industrie. 
Ainsi tel objet compte entre les richesses serait ou ne serait 
pas capital selon I'intention de son possesseur et acquerrait 
ou perdrait la qualite de capital selon les changements 
que subirait cette intention. \ Une telle classification a le 
defaut de ne s'attacher a aucun fait materiel sensible ; le 
meme objet deviendrait ou cesserait d'etre capital en changeant 
de proprietaire ; un pain, par exemple, serait capital dans 
la boutique du boulanger, mais une fois acquis par le consom- 
mateur, il ne serait plus un capital. Qui ne voit tout se 
qu'une telle classification a de conventionel et d'arbitraire ? 
Mieux vaut ramener le mot capital k son acception vulgaire, 
d'apres laquelle il designe une somme de richesses, d'utilites 
existantes crees par un travail anterieur." 

This popular definition is almost identical with the one 



132 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

adopted by J. B. Say, though it is only fair to the latter to say 
that he distinguished between capital productif and capital 
improductif, denoting by the first what is commonly denom- 
inated capital by the English economists, namely, in Bastiat's 
rough categories, "tools, materials, provisions." Though 
heartily admitting the force of Courcelle Seneuil's critical 
arguments against the current acceptation of the term, I can- 
not find that he makes any use, in his two cumbrous and 
erudite volumes, of the popular conception. I concur rather 
with Mr. Macdonnel in regretting that a useful term should be 
wasted. " J. B. Say seems to have needlessly spoiled a term 
which fitted a well-defined idea," or rather, a very vague 
idea, which deserves to be well defined. 

M'CuUoch's definition agrees with what we must call 
Professor Fawcett's second definition : " The capital of a 
country consists of those portions of the produce of industry 
existing in it which are DIEECTLY available either for the 
support of human beings or the facilitating of production." 
When Mr. Macdonnel says that "whatever wealth, labour 
excluded, is devoted to help to form new wealth is capital," we 
must interpret " devoted " in the sense of " already applied " or 
of " intended to be applied " to the said purpose, to either of 
which senses my objections apply. 

On the whole, then, after comparison, I think we must give 
the preference to Mill's definition. And no doubt it is the most 
representative of the generally-accepted usage of the term. So 
for the purposes of this analysis we may mainly confine ourselves 
to the condensed form of it given above, namely : " Whatever 
things are destined to supply productive labour with the shelter, 
protection, tools, and materials which the work requires, and to 
feed and otherwise maintain the labourers during the process, 
are capital." 

Now, passing over the objectionable factor destiny, and 
assuming for the present that the destination of an article may 
be approximately coincident with the present intention of its 
possessor, even then the definition is merely one of enumera- 
tion. What is a quadruped ? A quadruped is a horse, or a 
rat, or an elephant, or a pig, etc., without any reference to the 
distinctive attributes of the class. Of what conceivable use is 



WHAT IS CAPITAL? 133 



such a definition ? You may walk through a forest, and every 
now and then mark a tree with chalk. When you have done, 
no doubt a certain class does exist, viz. the chalked trees. 
But, so far as scientific utility is concerned, the classification 
might just as well never have been made. If the enumeration 
be exhaustive we may have a very distinct idea of the various 
things denoted by capital, but what we want is an equally 
distinct idea of the attributes connoted by the term. 

Until we have found the connotation of a term it cannot 
be said to have been defined, though it may have been trans- 
lated into other words. 

But the connotation of a term is often implied before it is 
expressed, because it is often felt before it is seen. Even in 
the case of the chalked trees the grouping may be of use 
provided you were guided in your selection by some clearly or 
dimly recognised features common to all the trees chalked and 
peculiar to them. And so it is with capital. That there is an 
actual something approximately common and peculiar to all 
the groups of things enumerated in Mill's definition of capital 
we cannot deny. On the contrary, it is this vaguely con- 
ceived connotation which has enabled economists to do so 
much work with such a classification ; just as a chemist may 
do good work with an ill understood or impure chemical. And 
it is this something which I propose to bring into the light 
of day shorn of its imperfections and denuded of the fog 
which has hitherto surrounded it. Like tainted water in the 
kitchen, it has been mixed with all our food, doing more harm 
in some quarters than in others, and, on the whole, sufficing 
better than no water at all. What classes have suffered most 
from the pollution I shall point out in the next chapter. 

The best recipe for exposing the weakness of a so-called 
definition by enumeration is to hunt it down through all the 
groups said to be comprised within it, and by selecting extreme 
examples of each to show how they are at variance with the 
vaguely implied connotation as interpreted by common sense. 
This we will now proceed to do. 

First example. — Here is a cotton-mill, with machinery, coal, 
cotton, oil, an organised body of workpeople, and every other 
evidence of being devoted to production. It is burnt down. 



134 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

Was it capital ? Common sense, guided by a vague perception 
of the conr^otation of tlie term, answers, It was capital : but 
the definition says ITo ; it was not destined to assist produc- 
tion, and therefore it was not capital. 

Second example. — -A Scotch nobleman has a hundred sacks 
of oats intended to be consumed by his hunters ; he dies, and 
his thrifty heir converts the oats into porridge for his work- 
people. Were the oats capital ? Mill says. Yes, and common 
sense thinks so too, while Professor Fawcett first says IsTo, and 
then says Yes. 

Third exam'ple. — A thousand colliers on the eve of a 
monster meeting eat their suppers, not knowing whether a 
strike will commence on the morrow or not. Is their supper 
capital ? Mill gives it up, so does Scrope, and so does 
Fawcett till, on second thoughts, he says it may possibly 
be devoted to production, and therefore it is capital. Common 
sense feels that it is capital. 

Quitting destiny, the next factor that merits attention is 
productive labour. The commodity in question may be 
destined to supply labour with the shelter, production, tools, or 
materials which the work requires, but unless that labour be 
productive labour the article is not capital. And now arises 
the question : What is productive labour ? Half a dozen 
different answers are at once forthcoming. J. B. Say confers 
that title upon all labour which results in utilities or, in other 
words, gives pleasure to others. M'CuUoch goes one step 
farther, and includes all labour which gives pleasure even to 
the labourer, such as eating turtle or blowing bubbles ; 
Mill rejects all utilities that are not capable of being embodied 
mediately or immediately in material objects other than human, 
while the stricter sect exclude all that cannot at once be 
carried off: for example. Mill regards as productive labour the 
work of the schoolmaster, because eventually the country will 
be the richer for it materially ; but not until the country is 
the richer for it will Professors Scrope and Fawcett pay any 
regard to it ; and even then, if it comes through the medium of 
the skill of labourers, as it needs must, the former refuses to class 
the new increment as due to capital, but rather as due to 
labour. We will, however, as heretofore, follow Mill. Accord- 



WHAT IS CAPITAL^ 135 



iug to him productive labour includes " only those kinds of 
exertion which produce utilities embodied in material objects " 
as the direct or the ultimate result. Lest I should appear to 
some wilfully to misunderstand Mill's exact meaning, and to 
complicate purposely this definition within a definition, I shall 
do well to quote him on this point in full. " I shall . . . 
understand ... by productive labour only those kinds of 
exertion which produce utilities embodied in material objects. 
But in limiting myself to this sense of the word I mean to 
avail myself of the full extent of that restricted acceptation, 
and I shall not refuse the appellation productive to labour 
which yields no material profit as its direct result, provided 
that an increase of material products is its ultimate con- 
sequence." As examples of this indirectly or mediately pro- 
ductive labour, he cites the labour expended in the acquisition 
of manufacturing skill, and the labour of officers of Government 
in affording the protection which is indispensable to the 
prosperity of industry. 

N'ow the only objection I have to offer to this definition 
is, that it can have no conceivable application. It is clearly 
impossible to draw a line, even a rough line, between labour 
that will eventually conduce to material wealth and labour 
that will not. We have already admitted the labour of the 
educator and the Government officer, and it will be hard to 
exclude the soldier and the tragedian if one will but think of 
the ultimate results of their work. . To avoid the indefinite ex- 
tension of the class, Mill had recourse to a new boundary line ; 
he again falls back on the intention of the labourer and worker. 
Concerning the labour of the musical performer, actor, and 
showman, he observes : " Some good may, no doubt, be pro- 
duced beyond the moment upon the feelings and disposition 
or general state of enjoyment of the spectators ; or, instead of 
good there may be harm ; but neither the one nor the other is 
the effect intended, is the result for which the exhibitor works 
and the spectator pays : nothing but the immediate pleasure." 
Surely this sudden change of front is lamentable — is inadmissible. 
We follow tediously the consequences of a given action through 
several generations down to the final embodiment of its result- 
ing utility in a material object, and we triumphantly claim for 



136 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

the said action the title of productive labour, when to our 
chagrin we are met by the very prescriber of the requisite quali- 
fications with the objection that such embodiment was not the 
original object of the worker. May we not safely retort that 
such is not the aim of anything like half the labourers whose 
work has been styled productive ; of the soldier, for instance, 
or the clergyman ? Nor should we better ourselves by accept- 
ing any other economist's definition of productive labour in 
preference to Mill's. 

We must, however, take things as we find them, and 
having obtained the value of productive labour in known terms, 
substitute them in the original equation ; and we have 
the following : " Whatever things are destined to supply 
those kinds of exertion which produce utilities immediately or 
mediately embodied, and intended to be embodied, in material 
objects, with the shelter, etc. etc., are capital." 

In order to apply the term to any given article we have 
to ascertain not only what it is destined to be devoted to, but 
also whether the utility possibly resulting from it is ever 
destined to be embodied in material objects, and further 
whether, if so, such embodiment was the intention of its 
original employer. 

We are still on the threshold of our inquiry. We now 
come to the consideration of the separate groups of things 
which alone, even under the above-mentioned circumstances, 
can be classed as capital. And the first of these is shelter. 
It will be remembered that Scrope was careful to reject 
everything as capital that is not movable. But shelter is 
usually afforded by something immovable, such as a roof and 
walls. The warehouse that protects the finished goods is to 
be rejected ; the light shed that protects the machinery is also 
to be rejected. The tarpaulin that protects the waggons in 
the yard is or is not included according to the nature of the 
fastenings by which it is connected with the poles in the earth ; 
while the umbrella, beneath whose grateful shelter the foreman 
inspects the works and the workers, is unmistakably capital of 
the first water, being very movable. 

Surely political economy had its origin long prior to the 
days of Adam Smith, in the brains of the ancient lawyers, who 



WHA T IS CAPITAL ? 1 37 



distinguished real from personal property, on the grounds that 
no man, be he never so feloniously disposed, can run away 
with an acre of land. I lay stress on this movable quali- 
fication, because, though not expressly contained in Mill's 
definition, it is throughout his work assumed to be so con- 
tained, and everywhere land and its appurtenances are ex- 
cluded from the category of capital. 

The next station at which we shall stop is called 
" protection." Does this include the high wall that wards off 
the thief ; the iron bars in front of the jeweller's window ; the 
policeman who watches the premises ; the law that protects 
the property of citizens ? All, any, or none of these ? Mill's 
definition would, I suppose, include all : but in practice, as 
we have seen, he excludes all things attached to the soil. 
Professors Fawcett and Scrope would exclude also the police- 
man and the law, except in so far as the latter is embodied in 
material statute-books, more or less movable. Let not the 
reader smile at these divisions and differences. Even the 
most frivolous of them has its origin in philosophical distinctions 
more or less profound. 

ISTor does the term " tools " convey any clearer meaning. 
Is the anvil a tool as well as the hammer ? the chimney as 
well as the bellows ? the stream as well as the water-wheel ? 
The steam as well as the piston ? the coal as well as the boiler ? 
It would be hard to draw the line between them ; yet would 
any of the above-named economists call the wind that fills the 
sail capital ? And similarly with materials. We do not seem 
to emerge from the fog as we advance. What, in the name of 
clear conception, are materials ? There is a branch of them 
known as raw materials. Here is a piece of undyed cloth. 
It is the dyer's raw material, and therefore, by definition, 
capital. Again, here is a plastered house, destined to be 
painted custard colour, according to the genius of the English 
people. Evidently it is precisely in the situation of the 
undyed cloth, and therefore it must be regarded as the 
painter's capital. Is it so regarded ? Everything, in short, 
destined to be improved, repaired, touched up, is capital ; and 
hence the greater the quantity of unfinished articles in a 
country the greater its potential capital. So that we may 



138 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

create capital by scratching the paint off a neighbour's door, 
because the door will probably soon become raw material in 
the hands of the painter. The fog thickens. 

We need not push " materials " any farther, but after 
noting that the shelter, protection, tools, and materials must 
not only be devoted to but actually required by the work in 
order to merit the title of capital, we will proceed to consider 
the next group of commodities included under Mill's definition. 
Whatever things are destined to feed and otherwise maintain 
the labourers during the process are also capital. Farther on 
Mill admits that not all the food, but only so much as is 
absolutely requisite to enable the labourers to perform their 
share of the work, is capital. Now, unless we are prepared to 
show how much of John's beer, bread, and beef goes to the 
repair of John's muscles and motor nerves, and to what extent 
the latter are actually confined to the work he has to do, I 
cannot perceive of what use the term capital can be to science. 
How can we compare profits with capital, quantitatively — that 
is, find the ratio of profits to capital — unless we can measure 
both ? Again, one bootmaker, devouring in one week fifty 
shillings' worth of turtle, venison, and old port, works hard 
and turns out six pair of boots ; are the sources of his strength 
to be deemed all capital ? It may be that a smaller quantity of 
the same stuff would not have sufficed to support him, any 
more than a reduction could have been made in the amount of 
beer, beef, and bread consumed by another bootmaker at a cost 
of fifteen shillings, who turns out an equal number of similar 
boots. There is no stipulation in the definition as to the kind 
of food that may be called capital, but only that the quantity 
must not exceed that which is actually converted into labour. 
Mr. Macdonnel handles this question in rather a remarkable 
and amusing manner. After putting the question whether a 
bottle of champagne is or is not capital, he answers that it 
depends on circumstances. If consumed by one who produces 
nothing valuable it is not capital (but was it ?). If by one 
who produces something valuable, then it is capital ; " or, to 
be accurate, so much of the value of it as would have bought 
equal nourishment forms capital, the rest being purely unpro- 
ductive expenditure." 



WHAT IS CAPITAL ? 139 



So that not the champagne, or even part of it, which would 
not have sufficed to afford the requisite stimulus, but part of 
the value of the whole of the champagne, is capital. The value, 
not the matter, is capital. This recalls the definition of J. B. 
Say : " Le valeur de toutes ces choses " (before enumerated) 
" compose ce qu'on appelle un capital productif." 

Laughable as this shuffle appears, it is paralleled, and 
indeed eclipsed, by the feats of legerdemain performed by Mill 
himself and his whole army of disciples, which have yet to be 
exposed. 

As to those things which otherwise maintain the labourers, 
no doubt clothes, fuel, and shelter are meant, but so dense is 
the mist already surrounding us that even this cloud adds 
little or nothing to the darkness. 

And so, having at last groped our way to the end of our 
journey, we confess with disappointment that the currently 
accepted and best definition of capital, apparently clear and 
definite enough when seen at a distance, on nearer and closer 
scrutiny " dissolves, and, like the baseless fabric of th' air vision, 
leaves not a rack behind." 

Enough of this sort of analysis is as good as a feast. In 
fact, some people have no sympathy with us in such work, 
and indeed get very angry when we attempt it. 

" In political economy," says Scrope, " much labour has 
been expended in vain, and great confusion introduced where 
all is really plain enough, by OYei-refining, and by ill-judged 
endeavours to give a mathematical accuracy to definitions and 
propositions which, from the nature of their subject, can pretend 
to no more than the grouping of phenomena according to their 
most striking general characters." But what are the most 
striking general characters of those things which are grouped 
together under the head of capital ? That is precisely what we 
want to get at — the connotation of the term. 

However, let us lay aside our dissecting-knife and assume 
that, to all practical intents and purposes, our political econo- 
mists mean roughly to comprise in the class just what Bastiat 
groups together as " tools, materials, provisions," and that the 
variance between them is due to a desire to be more exact — 
one regarding this feature, another that, as most requiring 



140 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

elucidation or qualification ; let us grant that all these various 
and elaborate definitions do but testify to a consciousness of the 
imperfection of the original proposition, embodied in so many 
qualifying clauses. Be it so. Tools, materials, provisions ; 
this is what is meant in plain words by capital. We will ask 
no questions about anvils and chimneys ; we will ask no 
questions about raw materials and painted houses ; we will 
ask no questions about venison and beef, beer and port wine. 
After all, honest folk know what they are talking about when 
they speak of tools, of materials, and of provisions. Like good 
children, we will not ask troublesome questions. 

Now may we not say we know what capital is ? at least 
roughly ? I^ot a bit of it. Just as we begin to try and 
accommodate ourselves to loose forms of speech, and to rest 
content with tolerably clear ideas of things, all our limits are 
suddenly swept away by the intrusion of two new elements 
into the conception, both wholly subversive of our newly-found 
interpretation of the term. 

In two extraordinary propositions we are informed, firstly, 
that anything of value whatsoever which can be exchanged 
for capital (as defined) is itself capital, by which we must 
understand anything of value whatsoever, for the value of 
a thing means that it can be exchanged for other things ; 
secondly, that there is no such thing at all as capital in an 
absolute sense, but that an article may be capital in rela- 
tion to one person, not capital in relation to another person. 

These statements seem so remarkable that they must be 
borne out by suitable quotations from the works of our represen- 
tative economist Mill. Speaking of a man's capital on p. 69 
of the Principles he says : " What, then, is his capital ? Pre- 
cisely that part of his possessions which is to constitute his 
fund for carrying on fresh production. It is of no consequence 
that a part or even the whole of it is in a form in which it 
cannot directly supply the wants of the labourers." Again, 
on p. 7 1 : " Whether all these values are in a shape directly 
applicable to productive use makes no difference. Their 
shape, however it may be, is a temporary accident, but once 
destined for production they do not fail to find a way of trans- 
forming themselves into things capable of being applied to it." 



WHAT IS CAPITAL 1 141 



To some minds it would appear almost desirable to employ- 
two technical terms — one to designate the group of articles 
hitherto classed together as capital, and another to designate 
whatever of value is destined to be exchanged for such 
capital. But as neither term would be of any conceivable 
use to exact science, I shall not waste space in converting 
one bad tool into two not much better. Let us rather prepare 
ourselves for the second revelation, to the effect that, after all, 
there is no such thing as capital jper se. Speaking of a 
particular instance. Mill, on p. 74 of the Principles, writes : 
"In the present instance that which is virtually capital to 
the individual is or is not capital to the nation according as 
the fund which, by the supposition, he has not dissipated, has 
or has not been dissipated by somebody else." In other words, 
wealth which is capital to an individual may be not-capital 
to the nation or another individual or group of individuals. 
The same article is capital to A, not-capital to B ; and capital 
is, therefore, merely a relative term, i.e. implies a particular 
relation between a particular person and a particular thing. 

Our original definition, to be more accurate, requires to be 
so expanded as to embody these two new important factors 
somehow or other. I submit the following : — 

" Whatever things are destined to supply those kinds of 
exertion which produce utilities immediately or mediately 
embodied (and originally intended to be embodied) in material 
objects with the shelter, protection, tools, and materials which 
the work requires, and to feed and otherwise maintain the 
labourers during the process, or whatever things are capable 
of being and destined to be exchanged for such, are, in relation 
to some person or persons according to circumstances not 
specified, capital." Or, to adopt Bastiat's abbreviated form, as 
we have consented to do, "Tools, materials, provisions, and 
whatsoever is intended or destined to be exchanged for such, 
are capital with respect to somebody." 

Our determination to look at things kindly, and, as 
Scrope advises us, with our eyes half- closed, has, I fear, 
landed us in a quagmire not much better than that in which 
our method of analysis terminated. 

If we really wish to know what the. term capital means 



142 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

we must have recourse to the comparative method, and by 
extracting that which is common and peculiar to all forms of 
so-called capital that we can bring together within our field of 
vision, finally discover the true connotation, instead of barely 
enumerating the more convenient forms, and averting our gaze 
from the ugly borderland specimens, the ornithorhynchuses 
and pterodactyluses of our kingdom. 

Let us commence operations by colligating the following 
cases drawn together from various points of the compass : — 

The above-mentioned factory in working order before it is 
burnt down. 

The hundred sacks of oats intended for his hunters by the 
above-mentioned old nobleman. 

The slaves on a sugar-plantation. 

The tall chimney which causes the strong draught in a 
boiler-house. 

An acre of plough land in Middlessex. 

An acre of land on the banks of Lake Tanganyika. 

A casket of diamonds cut and polished. 

I shall assume that common sense, or rather the opinion 
of all those whose vague idea of capital is sufficiently clear to 
cause them to desire a term or name for the conception, will 
admit that of this group of cases the first five are capital and 
the last two are not capital. What we have to do is to find out 
what is common to the five and not common to the last two. 

And, first of all, we see that the element of destiny is 
excluded by the factory, which by supposition is not destined 
to produce new wealth. Next we see that the intention of 
the possessor does not affect the question, for although the oats 
are intended to be unproductively consumed, yet they are 
regarded as capital. 

The case of the slaves disposes of the allegation that man 
is not capital, " but only that for which capital exists." 

The tall chimney excludes the factor movability, which, 
but for high authorities, I should hardly have considered 
worthy of express exclusion. 

And land may or may not be capital according to circum- 
stances, for in Middlesex we regard it as such, but not on the 
banks of Tanganyika. 



WHA T IS CAPITAL ? . 143 



Lastly, value is not a sufficient mark, for the diamonds are 
not capital, though no one will dispute their value. 

Up to the present we can see only two factors common to 
the five examples of capital. Firstly, they all possess value ; 
and secondly, they are all originally fit or suitable for the 
production of wealth. They contain a possibility of helping to 
form new capital. 

But value is already excluded because it is not only 
common to the forms of capital but also to the casket of 
diamonds. Nor are we more fortunate with our potentiality, 
for there is that in the acre of land on the shores of the 
African lake which would enable it to assist in the production 
of new wealth, viz. a fertile soil. Moreover, the wind that 
turns the mill-sails and drives the ship contributes most un- 
mistakably to the creation of wealth, and yet it is not capital. 

To what straits, then, are we driven ! 

It seems as though there were no attribute at once 
common to all forms of wealth properly called capital and yet 
peculiar to them. ^NTor does any amount of search and 
scrutiny serve to throw any light on the position. If we 
increase the number of cases we are no better off. Have we 
not tried everything, and in vain ? Must we after all give it 
up ? One more attempt. Value is common to all, and 
fitness to assist in the creation of new wealth is also common 
to all. Yet neither of these attributes is peculiar to capital. 
May it be that the combination of the two is the required 
connotation ? We feel we are getting nearer. The wind that 
helps to create wealth has no value, and the diamonds that 
have great value help to create no wealth. Alas ! consider 
these bananas at Covent Garden. They are sold for three- 
pence each, and are therefore very valuable. Humboldt 
calculated their productiveness as compared with that of wheat 
as 133 to 1 ; and in many parts of India and the West 
Indies they form the chief food of labourers. Yet as we look 
at them we feel they are not capital in this country. 
Again, this fibrous variety of actinolite, called asbestos from 
its incombustibility, has been utilised, and would be la a 
hundred ways in the shape of incombustible cloth (for its 
fibres are as fine as flax) but for its high value. 



144 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

Suddenly the truth flashes in upon us. The connotation 
of capital rends its veil of mist and gloom and comes forth 
clear, sharply -defined, and brilliant as a crystal. Once seen 
there is no mistaking it. 

" Capital is that the value of which is due to the value of its 
products." 

It is not long, it is not vague, but pithy, transparent, and 
to the point. Anything which owes its value to the demand, 
not for itself, as calculated to afford immediate gratification to 
the consumer, but for some other commodity into the creation 
of which it enters as an element, whether as raw material, as tool 
or machine, as worker, brute or human — such a thing is capital. 

If the value of a commodity partly consumed for its own sake, 
partly in the manufacture of other articles (as coals, for example), 
varies with the value of the goods manufactured by means of 
it, it is clearly capital, whether or no the portion of it under 
consideration be or be not destined for immediate consumption. 

With this key we at once and easily unlock all difficulties. 
Take the piece of undyed cloth. Is it capital in the hands of 
the dyer ? In order to answer this question we first inquire 
whether the value of the said cloth is due to the demand for 
it in the dyed state. If so, if the immediate consumer does 
not offer so high a price for the undyed material as the dyer 
can afford to do, then it is capital. Take the diamonds, 
supposing them to be of a fair size. Are they capital ? 
Clearly the polisher or glass-cutter cannot afford to buy them 
for the purposes of his trade at the value their unassisted 
pleasure -giving power can command in the market as orna- 
ments ; their value is not affected by his demand, hence they 
are not capital. 

Is venison capital ? Certainly not. Because its value is 
due, not to the demand for the products into which it may 
enter (as labourers, for instance), but to its intrinsic power of 
affording immediate gratification. 

Is bread capital in England ? In order to answer this 
question we must ascertain whether an extended demand for 
any commodity into which bread enters as an element causes 
a rise in the value of bread. Unquestionably an extended 
demand for labourers (or, as is commonly said, for labour) is 



V WHAT IS CAPITAL^ 145 

followed by a rise in the value of bread, other things equal. 
Hence bread is capital in England. And so on with any 
commodity that may be proposed for consideration. 

Both land and labourers must now be reinstated under 
the head of capital, for clearly the value of labourers is 
entirely due to the value of their productions, and not to 
the gratification obtainable from them immediately, except 
in a few cases, such as singers, dancers, actors, and the 
like, who in the exercise of their functions cause direct satis- 
faction. 

Labourers in general, commonly so called — that is to 
say, human beings engaged in the creation of new and valu- 
able matter, whether by manual exertion or as managers, 
superintendents, co-ordinators, or inventors — are capital. 
There is nothing new in this. It has been admitted, for 
various insufficient reasons, by some of our shrewdest 
economists. 

M'CuUoch {Principles, p. 116) writes: — 

" However extended the sense previously attached to the term capital 
may at first sight appear, we are inclined to think that it should be inter- 
preted still more comprehensively. Instead of understanding by capital all 
that portion of the produce of industry extrinsic to man which may be made 
applicable to his support and to the facilitating of production, there does 
not seem to be any good reason why man himself should not, and very 
many why he should, be considered as forming a part of the national 
capital Man is as much the produce of previous outlays of wealth 
expended on his sustenance, education, etc., as any of the instruments con- 
structed by his agency ; and it would seem that in those inquiries which 
regard only his mechanical operations and do not involve the consideration 
of his higher and nobler powers, he should be regarded in precisely the 
same point of view. Every individual who has arrived at maturity, 
though he may not be instructed in any particular art or profession, may 
yet with perfect propriety be viewed in relation to his natural powers as 
a machine which it has cost twenty years of assiduous attention and the 
expenditure of a considerable capital to construct. And if a further sum 
be expended in qualifying him for the exercise of a business or profession 
requiring unusual skill, his value will be proportionally increased, and he 
will be entitled to a greater reward for his exertions, as a machine becomes 
more valuable when it acquires new powers by the expenditure of 
additional capital or labour in its construction. Adam Smith has fully 
admitted the justice of this principle, though he has not reasoned consist- 
ently from it. He states that the acquired and useful talents , of the 
inhabitants should be considered as forming a portion of the national 

L 



146 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

capital. ' The acquisition of such talents,' he justly observes, ' during the 
education, study, or apprenticeship of the acquirer, always costs a real 
expense, which is a capital fixed and realised, as it were, in his person.' " 

Unfortunately M'CuUoch finds himself just as unable to 
cope with his new principle as Smith did before him, not 
because it was a false one, but because it was based by both 
on a false reasoning, a rotten foundation. 

!N"or is it by any means new to comprehend land under the 
head of capital, though we are in a minority in so doing. Mr. 
Macdonnel passes this criticism on the English economists, 
after comprising land under materials or tools, and therefore 
under capital : " This is indeed contrary to the usage of 
English economists, who put land, the representative of all 
other natural agents, in a category by itself. But two reasons, 
T think, warrant a deviation. In the first place, the classifica- 
tion of English economists with regard to this point involves 
an inconsistency ; for though laying it down — to take Mr. 
Eawcett as their spokesman — ' that capital is all that wealth, 
in whatever shape or form it may exist, which is set aside to 
assist future production,' and though of course viewing land 
as a portion of wealth, they exclude land from the kinds of 
wealth included under capital." 

However, without troubling ourselves to examine author- 
ities on this point further, we perceive that under capital fall 
both land and labourers — not labour, which is a mere meta- 
physical entity, or, what comes to the same thing, no entity at 
all, but labourers. Strange to say, this confusion of materials 
with forces is made by all the leading economists without excep- 
tion, including even the great logician and philosopher, J. S. Mill, 
who says : " The human being himself I do not class as wealth. 
He is the purpose for which wealth exists." And then he pro- 
ceeds to class his ability to work under the head of labour. " But 
his acquired capacities, which exist only as means, and have 
been called into existence by labour, fall rightly, as it seems 
to me, within that designation." 

A weak objection to classing labour under the head of 
capital is offered by Scrope in the form of a criticism on 
M'Culloch's opinion just quoted. 

" We need hardly observe," he says, " that things which 



WHAT IS CAPITAL^ 147 



are identical can have no reciprocal action on each other " — 
from which we are to conclude that if land and labour be cap- 
ital, disquisitions on the reciprocal influence of land, labour, 
and other kinds of capital, of rent, wages, and other kinds of 
profits, must needs be vain delusions and absurdities. We 
may reply that species of one genus may differ considerably 
amongst themselves, and may act and react one upon another 
to any extent, notwithstanding the fact that they have at- 
tributes in common. 

N'or is it disputed that there are well-marked species or 
sub-classes of capital which are approximately coincident with 
the old so-called genera, land and labourers, and it is this fact 
which gives value to the problems and theorems contained in 
works which are based upon an erroneous view of the term 
capital. Were it not so the whole tree would indeed be rotten 
because of the disease at the root. 

But no one denies that, of all kinds of capital, human 
beings alone have this peculiarity, that they are the cause of 
values as well as the part cause of valuables. ISTo wonder 
labourers are a very marked and distinct sub - class of 
capital ! 

Land, too, has most important peculiarities, into which we 
need not enter here.^ Earities are often classed together and 
distinguished by a class-mark. For instance, we talk of mono- 
poly prices in speaking of coal, of the works of old masters, 
and the like. Then there is the well-known division of capital 
into fixed and circulating, which we will now proceed briefly 
to consider ; and at the same time we must observe that this 
division testifies to a real but vaguely-discerned distinction 
which underlies the flimsy one commonly alleged. We are 
told (Mill's Princi;ples, p. 114): " Of the capital engaged in 
the production of any commodity there is a part which, after 
being once used, exists no longer as capital, is no longer cap- 
able of rendering service to production, or at least not the same 

service, nor to the same sort of production Capital 

which in this manner fulfils the whole of its oftice in the pro- 
duction in which it is engaged, by a single use, is called 
circulating capital. . . . Another large portion of capital, how- 

^ See chapter on " Property." 



148 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

ever, consists in instruments of production of a more or 
less permanent character, which produce their effect, not by 
being parted with, but by being kept, and the efficacy of which 
is not exhausted by a single use. . . . Capital which exists in 
any of these durable shapes, and the return to which is spread 
over a period of corresponding duration, is called fixed capital." 

So that the distinction appears to consist in the number of 
times a given commodity may be employed in the same 
process, those which can be employed only once being called 
circulating, those which can be employed more than once, fixed. 

N"ow to me it seems that, although in ninety-nine cases out 
of a hundred fixed capital suffices for more than one process, 
and circulating capital for only one, yet these are but accidental 
and not the essential characteristics of the two classes. 

The real distinction lies deeper. It is this : those things 
the eventual consumption of which is essential to the creation 
of the required compound or new product form one class, 
vaguely indicated by the term circulating; those things the 
eventual consumption of which is not essential, but only 
accidental, to the creation of the required compound, form 
another class — fixed capital. ISTo doubt all capital is consumed, 
but so is everything else ; the iron ladle required to stir this 
molten metal soon wears out and must be renewed. If it wore 
out in one use, as the wick of a candle is destroyed as fast as 
the tallow, Mill would call it circulating capital. So with a 
quill pen. One day's use destroys it. Yet the ladle, 
the wick, and the pen are all (so far as they are 
capital at all) fixed capital. Why ? Because, if they 
never wore out at all, even after a million processes, so 
far from being less useful, they would not only not impair 
the product to which they contribute, but rather render it more 
pure. The gold pen with which this is written has been in 
use for many years and is in no wise worse than when it was new. 
And so with a permanent wick in an oil-lamp, but not so with 
the oil or tallow. If that were not changed, consumed, the 
lamp or candle would give no light, the sempstress would not 
see to work, and the product, shirt, or dress, would not be made. 

The number of processes for which an article will serve is 
quite immaterial to science ; it is a mere question of degree of 



WHAT IS CAPITAL ? 149 



durability, and we can base upon it no such valuable philoso- 
phical classification as can be based upon the distinction between 
essentially and accidentally consumed capital. And here I 
may point out that this very distinction is the one which 
underlies the division of capital into tools and materials. Tools 
are exactly what I have defined as fixed or accidentally con- 
sumed capital. Materials are our circulating or essentially 
consumed capital. This discovery of identity, and the concep- 
tion upon which the classes have hitherto been instinctively 
based, are of immense importance in the study of Plutology. 

And now, in conclusion, we may here review, and, with the 
aid of our new light, with advantage scrutinise, Mill's four 
theorems concerning capital. 

The first is that industry is limited by capital. iNTow if 
this means that the creation of new wealth is limited by the 
quantity of the materials which enter into its constitution, the 
so-called theorem is merely a truism. But if it means that 
it is limited by the quantity of capital other than human (which 
it evidently must do consistently with Mill's doctrines) it 
amounts to saying generally that where one of the elements is 
wanting the compound containing it cannot be produced : also 
a truism. However, it so happens that there are such com- 
pounds as combinations of labourers and not-capital, as, for 
example, a stone statue. Sculpture, provided the material used 
be not valuable, is an industry not limited by any capital other 
than labourers. According to Mill's own notion of capital, 
therefore, his first theorem is false. 

The second theorem is that capital is the result of saving. 
l!^ow in what conceivable sense can it be said of a new and 
useful invention that it is the result of saving ? And yet it may 
be, and usually is, capital in the highest degree. Or how is a 
newly -found oil well the result of saving? And yet it is 
unquestionably capital. JSTo doubt, in so far as articles capable 
of affording immediate gratification are by preference combined 
with others for the purpose of producing more valuable pro- 
ducts these products are the result of saving ; and it is also true 
that most products do contain such saved elements. But we do 
not want half truths or accidental truths to stand for general or 
necessary truths ; and so judged the second theorem is false. 



150 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

The third theorem is that capital is consumed. This pro- 
position we have already discussed in treating of the division 
into fixed and circulating capital. I have shown that it is 
not of the essence of fixed capital to be consumed. All things 
are ever changing of course. But it is no more essential to fixed 
capital to wear out than it is to a silver teapot to contain a 
small quantity of lead, indisputable though the fact may be as 
a merely accidental fact. So that here we have a universal but 
accidental proposition standing for an essential truth. 

The fourth theorem is that a demand for commodities is 
not a demand for labour. It is difficult to translate this into 
scientific language, but, so far as it is intelligible, it seems to 
be either a truism or misleading. Consider the two following 
statements : A demand for iron ore is not a demand for lime- 
stone and coal. A demand for grapes is not a demand for 
apples. There is a wide difference between the two negations, 
for in the first case a demand for iron ore is accompanied by 
a demand for limestone and coal invariably, and it may 
roughly be said that a demand for the one is a demand for the 
other two. To say that it is not so is to state a truism of the 
weakest order, being based simply on the literal meaning of the 
words. But in the case of the grapes the negation is of 
a different character. A demand for grapes is not accom- 
panied by a demand for apples, which is in nowise affected 
thereby. If we criticise Mill's theorem in the first sense 
then we have a miserable truism to deal with. A demand 
for one thing is not, and cannot be, a demand for another. 
But if we regard it in the second sense, and inquire 
whether a demand for commodities is or is not invariably 
accompanied by a demand for labourers, I contend that it 
depends, in any given case, upon the answer to the question, 
whether the commodities demanded are or are not capital 
requiring the assistance of labourers in order to become capable 
of affording gratification. If they are such capital, then 
a demand for them is virtually a demand for labourers. If 
they are not such capital, then a demand for them is not 
a demand for labourers. We must condemn this theorem as 
being either a truism or misleading. 

There cannot be stronger testimony to the harmfulness of 



WHA T IS CAPITAL ? 151 



loose thought and corresponding phraseology than is afforded 
by the spectacle of a great logician like Mill propounding four 
fundamental theorems as the basis of his work, of which it must 
be said that the first is false, the second is false, the 
third non-essential, and the fourth either a truism or 
misleading. 



CHAPTEE VI 

THE LABOUR QUESTION 

" Can't you let things alone ? " asks the comfortable 
capitalist in his easy-chair. " Let sleeping dogs lie. All is 
fairly well, if only reformers would but sit still." l^o ! there 
is a time for rest and a time for action. When the social 
forces are gradually shaping themselves, and their eventual 
tendency is undiscernible, the social tinker is out of place. 
His suggestions for change, though frequently prompted by 
kindly feeling, are all based on rule of thumb. He would 
amend the laws of nature on superior principles evolved from 
his own inner consciousness. Sometimes he labours in vain. 
His efforts end in naught. Sometimes he is successful in 
his immediate aims, and then his efforts end in untold 
mischief 

But when the body politic is in unstable equilibrium — 
when the fabric of society is shaken to its foundations ; when 
all the signs of the times point to imminent change, for better 
or for worse — then the true statesman is he who, before the 
inevitable crash comes, can so forecast the resultant of appar- 
ently conflicting forces as to be able to guide them at once and 
without unnecessary waste of energy and time into their 
destined channel. The navigator cannot make the wind, and 
the statesman cannot create the social current, but both can so 
utilise the force supplied by nature as to make for salvation 
rather than wreck. To-day presents such an occasion. To sit 
still and " wish for the day " means ruin. All over the civilised 
world he that hath ears to hear may listen to the mutterings 
of the coming storm. Eiots in America ; riots in Belgium ; 



CHAP. VI THE LABOUR QUESTION 153 

riots in Trance ; riots in Holland ; riots even in tranquil 
London, — all originating not with the scum and refuse of society, 
but with honest, despairing workers clamouring for bread and 
for work, and not knowing whither to turn ; depression in trade 
(despite the rose-coloured reports of Eoyal Commissions) of an 
intensity and duration unprecedented in the history of 
industrialism : here a strike, brought to a close by the slow 
starvation of the strikers, only to be followed by another due 
to impossible wages ; there a lock-out, rendered necessary by 
vanishing profits ; everywhere discontent and wretchedness, 
aggravated by class envy and glaring inequalities of distribution ; 
all these and a hundred other signs bode revolution. It must 
come. It is for us to decide whether it shall be short, sharp, 
and bloody, or peaceful and thorough. There is no alter- 
native, and now that the people have taken the tiller into 
their own hands, it is upon the people that the responsibility 
must lie. 

Probably the first thing in this country to -strike an 
observer, unused all his life to the strange phenomenon, would 
be the spectacle of a large majority of human beings toiling all 
day long and every day of their dreary existence in order that 
a small minority may enjoy the proceeds of their work — 
toiling, too, at wages avowedly based on a calculation of the 
cost of " keeping body and soul together." Surely, if it were 
not so tragical, the situation would be almost comical. Yet we 
are asked to tremble at the approach of the revolution. Of 
whom ? Of those who tamely submit, almost without protest, 
to this anomalous, this monstrous system of wagedom ? Of 
men who stand passively by to see the lives of their wives and 
mothers and sisters crushed out of them beneath the car wheels 
of Juggernaut Plutax ? And this, too, is an age of cheap 
literature, of gratis education, of rapid communication, and of 
free meeting ? Is it that the Englishman of to-day has too 
much sense and too little pluck for revolution of the '' blood and 
iron " type ? Or is it that he has hopes of a peaceful revolu- 
tion and courage to wait for it ? Perhaps. 

But, first, what is the explanation of this singular economic 
system ? In accordance with what principle of justice does one 
of two partners take all the profits and the other none ? It 



154 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

was many years ago pointed out by Eicardo, and has long been 
a well-established doctrine of political economy, that under the 
competitive system of trade, wages have a tendency to gravi- 
tate down to a certain limit which may be called the cost of 
subsistence. No sooner has a temporary rise taken place than 
it is immediately swallowed up by the increase of population. 
In short, population is limited by the demand for wage labour, 
and therefore it is absurd to suppose that average wages can for 
any considerable period of time exceed their normal amount. 
That amount, to be perfectly accurate, is simply this : the 
amount requisite to keep the workman in sufficient health, plus 
enough to enable him to rear up children to take his place 
when he is used up ; and by " sufficient health " is meant, not 
enough for happiness, but enough to enable him to go through 
the average task required of him and the like of him. As Mill 
himself admits, " when by improvements in agriculture, the 
repeal of the corn-laws, or other such causes, the necessaries of 
life are cheapened . . . wages will fall at last, so as to leave 
the labourers no better off than before." So that whatever a 
workman may suppose himself to be saving and putting away 
over and above his cost of living must not be mistaken for 
profit. It is merely the refunding of the money spent on his 
own youth and training, or a sinking fund to pay for the 
unremunerative youth and training of his children, from which- 
ever point of view we choose to regard it. In neither case can 
it be regarded as profit. He has no more to call his own at 
the end of the process than he had at the beginning. He has 
his own body for what it is worth ; but so also the capitalist 
has his engine and fixed capital. True, he has been fed and 
kept during the process, but so has the engine been kept in 
repair and supplied with fuel. Again, if the capitalist is wise 
he has written off a certain sum — say ten per cent — for wear and 
tear of the engine, i.e. as a sinking fund wherewith to buy a 
new one when it is worn out. In all respects the economic 
position of the two is identical. The labourer and the engine 
are treated precisely alike. Then in what respect is the free 
labourer betlier off than the slave ? Let us face this question 
honestly. If we do not, posterity will. The truth is 
that economically the free labourer is no better off than a slave. 



VI THE LABOUR QUESTION 155 

The whole of the profits of his contribution to production are 
appropriated by the capitalist. The fruits of labour do not, 
under the existing system, pass to the wage receiver. Moreover, 
in one respect he is worse off than the slaves or even than the 
horses of his employer. In the case of costly slaves on a sugar 
plantation, and in the case of an English capitalist's horses, it 
is found more economical to keep them in good condition and 
to get a moderate amount of work out of them, rather than to 
overwork and underfeed them and buy new ones when they are 
worn out. With free men in an over-stocked labour market 
this is not the case, or at least it is not believed to be the case 
by the majority of employers, and the consequence is the 
workers are usually worse treated than if they had to be bought 
and sold outright. 

Of course it is not necessary to remind English workers 
that in spite of all this, wagedom is a great advance upon 
slavery. Liberty is worth not only fighting for, but suffering 
for. And after all, the European worker can choose his own 
work and his own employer, and can in comparatively rare 
cases even break the fetters of wagedom and himself become 
an employer. Indeed, as will be seen, wagedom is a necessary 
and beneficent transitional system between the serfdom of the 
past and the freedom of the future. The history of the con- 
version of the serf into the wage receiver is a proud chapter in 
the story of civilisation. 

But though a necessary state, wagedom is not a permanent 
state. Signs of a new order of industrialism are already 
apparent on all sides. The workers are chafing under the 
unfair distribution of wealth which clearly results from the 
present arrangement. Even the orthodox economists are 
trying hard to explain it away, while a few independent thinkers 
are busy seeking for the foundations of the new order. 

And what is it which the orthodox school have discovered 
as a palliative for the " iron law of wages " ? They have 
established the beautiful doctrine of the " standard of comfort." 
This bewitching tribute to sentiment is one of the master- 
pieces of modern economics. According to this soothing 
theory each class of workers tends to fix on some standard of 
living below which it will not condescend to exist. Eather 



156 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

than live at a lower scale of luxury individual members of the 
class will pass out of existence altogether, or, at least, they 
will cease to increase and multiply. 

The observation on which the doctrine is supposed to be 
based is that certain classes of workers appear to exercise this 
self-restraint. Medical men, lawyers, engineers, bankers, etc., 
do not allow competition so to swell their ranks that their 
incomes are driven down to the cost of subsistence, or, as a 
class, anywhere near it. lN"ow, if this is so with highly skilled 
workers such as those named, it must be so, it is urged, in a 
less noticeable degree with workers of less skilled grades. 

It does not occur to these academic writers that there is a 
simpler explanation of the observed fact than that of a tacit 
class-determination not to sink beneath a fixed standard of 
luxury. A very little reflection will suffice to satisfy us that 
the main reason why the competition between, say, railway 
contractors is not keen enough to reduce the whole class to 
starvation pay is that only persons with a very large reserve 
of capital to start with can compete at all. The same remark 
applies to bankers and merchants, and as for lawyers and 
medical men, quite apart from their State-guaranteed monopoly, 
a considerable initial outlay is necessary before any one is in a 
position to enter the lists of competitors, and that initial outlay 
means sunk capital, so that that which keeps up their average 
remuneration is not any fixed resolve on the part of these 
classes of workers to prevent competition from lowering their 
standard of comfort, but the inability of those not already 
enjoying such standard to swell the roll of competitors. 

When we come down to that class of work which does not 
at present require the possession of any capital (beyond the 
worker's own body) the case is very different. The mere 
exercise of a little imagination might have saved the professors 
from falling into this absurd fallacy. Let us suppose that 
wool-sorters (for example) form the excellent resolution not to 
allow their wages to fall below five shillings a day. What 
happens ? Trade is depressed ; wages fall ; wool-sorters are 
obstinate. Men out of work troop in and offer their services 
at four-and-six. It is clear there are more sorters than there 
is wool to be sorted. Now, are we asked to suppose that 



VI THE LABOUR QUESTION 157 

those who are out of work are to starve rather than to lower 
the wage of their class ? or that those who have work are to 
retire and starve in their stead ? or that both are to stand out 
solid for the old wage or go on strike ? This is only the 
dream of the unionist, not the fact of real life. But, says the 
economist, so long as wages remain below five shillings the 
sorters must refrain from marriage, so as to keep down their 
numbers. Can he really believe that this is done by any class 
of men, any particular class of workers ? and if it were — if 
the wages of wool-sorters could be maintained at a higher rate 
than the wages of those occupied in kindred pursuits — does he 
suppose that there would be no flow from the ranks of out- 
siders into an occupation better paid and requiring no more 
skill than their own ? 

The more we examine this sublimated hypothesis the 
clearer it becomes that in order to give it a shadow of 
credibility we must at least include the whole of the unskilled 
workers in a single class, and even hesitate to place in a 
different class those whose work requires but little skill 
or original outlay; but when this is done the doctrine falls 
to the ground. Facts are all against it. And even regarded 
as a bit of good advice it is simply disgusting in its cruel 
cynicism. 

One of the most pitiful spectacles in the labour contro- 
versy is that presented by certain economists who are con- 
stantly piling figures on figures to show that the lot of the 
working classes has materially improved within the last forty 
years. They seldom choose a shorter period, and never choose 
a longer. Whoever presents these periodic budgets, they are 
invariably received by a delighted circle of capitalists with a 
willing conviction. Vainly do the workers protest that they 
cannot see it, that the memory of the oldest amongst them 
fails to bear out the contention ; vainly do the socialists and 
others point out that the improvement is more in appearance 
than in reality — that three shoddy coats of to-day last no 
longer than one of the olden times, that rents are higher and 
meat dearer. The late Mr. Lloyd Jones may knock the whole 
fabric of " evidence " into a cocked hat, as he did at the 
Industrial Eemuneration Conference of 1885. No matter; 



158 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

on the next occasion up comes the brazen image and down go 
the worshippers in adoration before it, and even trade unionists 
cry Amen. 

It is useless to point out to them that even if their state- 
ments were true of the last forty years their conclusion would 
not be warranted. The immense strides in the applied 
sciences, and more especially in the means of locomotion, of 
quickly-distributed information, and of world-wide commerce, 
are alone sufficient to account for any observed temporary 
aberration from the Eicardian law during the period chosen. 
Let these disturbing causes disappear and the effects must 
disappear with them. Water is not always level, but when 
the storm has passed away, and the atmospheric disturbances 
abated, the waves settle down again into the old plane. 
Then, again, these theorists forget to compare the wages of the 
whole working population of to-day with those of forty years 
ago. They single out a few trades, and those chiefly in which 
machinery has wrought great and sudden changes. And they 
forget also to take into account the perquisites and privileges 
which pertain to the state of decaying serfdom. These are 
not to be mourned for, because they savour of slavery, but 
they had their economic value. 

But the best answer to the allegation that wages are 
better than they were, and tend permanently to become so, is 
this : it is fl^ 'priori impossible. The mathematical enthusiast 
who sits up night after night measuring disc after disc, plate 
after plate, hoop after hoop, in the vain endeavour to square 
the circle by exhaustive induction, receives his fair share of 
ridicule. It has been proved a priori that the ratio of the 
circumference to the radius of a circle is incommensurable, and 
there the matter ends. 

Similarly the tendency of wages to sink to the subsistence 
level has been demonstrated a priori, and those who seek to 
disprove it by an appeal to experiment or observation are 
precisely in the foolish position of the squarer of the circle. 
They deserve an equal share of derision. To refuse to listen 
to argument is a dangerous habit of mind, and we should be 
slow to give way to it, but surely when a man gravely under- 
takes to prove that the earth is flat, or that two and two make 



VI THE LABOUR QUESTION 159 

five, or that the ratio of circumference to diameter is exactly 
3-14159, or that he himself is Noah and remembers building 
the Ark, in such cases it is a saving of time to laugh him out 
of Court, especially if his " proof " extends through some folios 
of statistics and volumes of calculations based on unverifiable 
estimates and groundless assumptions. 

But not only are workers kicking against the wage system ; 
not only are our " economists " ashamed of it, and reduced to 
weaving moonbeams to clothe its hideousness ; not only are 
philanthropists trying to devise some new and better system 
as a substitute for it, but even men of business and employers 
of labour are themselves beginning to admit, in deed if not in 
word, that the present arrangement is not quite all that it 
should be. Employers as well as employed seem to allow to a 
certain extent that wages should somehow vary with the rate 
of profits. This admission, opposed though it is to the funda- 
mental doctrine on which the existing system is based, seems 
to be nearly universal. Arbitrations between masters and 
men are invariably conducted on the assumption that if profits 
are higher wages should be higher also. The sliding scale by 
which wages are made to vary with the price of the product 
is another instance of the admission of this new principle. So 
also are the co-operative societies that are springing up on all 
sides. In fine, there seems to be floating in the air, as it were, 
a notion (it can hardly be called a theory) that labour payment 
should somehow vary with profits. The notion is vague, it 
owns no parentage, it is associated with no great name ; it is 
perhaps the spontaneous outgrowth of an intuitively far-seeing 
public opinion, which is so often the precursor of the eventually 
accepted philosophical theory. 

Now, one of two things : either this new principle is 
unsound, vicious, and arbitrary, or else the whole modern 
system of wagedom is rotten. There is no alternative. 
Eicardo's position is unassailable. Wages must and always 
will gravitate to the inevitable limit in spite of all the 
temporary tinkerings of trade unions and of the legislature. 
As well try to elude the tendency of water to find its level as 
that of wages to oscillate about the Eicardian limit. Let us 
therefore make up our minds to look forward to the eternal 



i6o INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

semi-starvation of the great majority of our fellow-countrymen 
as the necessary consequence of the laws of nature, or else set 
to work to discover some substitute for wagedom. 

Ferdinand Lassalle and some others of Eicardo's more 
intelligent disciples, finding themselves upon the horns of this 
dilemma, broke away from the orthodox school and proposed 
to solve the great problem by abolishing property in the agents 
of production altogether. This is the socialistic solution. 
English Eadicals have proposed and carried out a number of 
legislative measures calculated or intended to relieve much of 
the temporary ill effects of keen competition — measures 
regulating the hours of labour, the ages at which children 
may perform certain tasks, the modes of carrying on some 
trades, the seasons of general holiday-making, etc. A strong 
impulse has also been given in this country (but more 
especially in Trance) to the system of "profit-sharing," as 
it is styled. Again, co-operative production societies indicate 
another solution, and finally, there is the "capitalisation 
of labour" to be explained in these pages. Let us examine 
these proposed measures of reform in their order, bearing 
in mind that all alike assume the instability of the existing 
order, and the necessity for some change in the relation 
subsisting between the so-called " employer and employed," 
that is to say, between the manual workers and the captains 
or organisers of industry. 

And first, what is the remedy put forward by socialism ? 
and what are the grounds on which it is based ? It is impos- 
sible to go thoroughly into this great question in the space 
which can here be allotted to it, but in order that there may 
be no appearance of misrepresentation it may be well to accept 
the words and arguments of a well-known English exponent 
of the doctrine. " Socialism," ^ in the opinion of this writer, 
" founds part of its disapproval of the present industrial system 
on the very facts pointed out by orthodox economists. It 
accepts Eicardo's iron law of wages, and recognising that wages 
tend to fall to the minimum on which the labourer can exist, 
it declares against the system of the hiring of workers for a 

^ "The Socialist Movement," by Annie Besant, Westminster Beview, July 
1886. 



VI THE LABOUR QUESTION i6i 

fixed wage, and the appropriation of their produce by the 
hirer." 

So far the socialist and the individualist reformer are at 
one. But the former draws an inference which the latter is 
unable to accept : — 

" SociaHsm declares that natural agents ought not to be private 
property, and that no idle class should be permitted to stand between 
land and labour and demand payment of a tax before it will permit the 
production of wealth. . . . What, then, is the remedy proposed by 
socialism ? It is to deal with capital as it deals with land ; to abolish the 
capitalist as well as the landlord, and to bring the means of production as 
well as the natural agents on which they are used under the control of 
the community. . . . Interest on capital has no place in sociahsm." 

This is plain speaking. Socialists differ among themselves 
as to the precise nature of the end to be aimed at, and still 
more as to the means to be adopted for the attainment of that 
end, but the above summary clearly states that which they may 
be said to hold in common. 

It is but just to socialists to admit that if there are any 
fallacies lurking beneath the arguments on which their creed 
is founded, those fallacies are shared and were formulated by 
the orthodox economists themselves, with whose fundamental 
principles, as the reviewer admits, socialism does not quarrel. 
Are there any such fallacies ? and if so, what are they ? I 
think there are several. 

One is, that the present social system (in so far as it is 
individualistic) recognises absolute proprietary right as some- 
thing higher than the solus populi. " The whole nation is 
at the mercy of a comparatively small class so long as it 
consents to admit that this class has a right to own the ground 
on which the nation lives." But the nation consents to nothing 
of the kind, and never has so consented. The institution of 
private property (in land and in everything else) is merely 
maintained as being the best-known arrangement for ensuring 
the most desirable and equitable distribution of wealth which 
is possible to humanity. I^or is private property regarded as 
absolute right. To begin with, land ownership is unknown to 
English law, and in practice the wishes of so-called land- 
owners are not allowed to stand between the land and the 

M 



1 62 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

general welfare, whether a street is to be cut through a 
congested district, or a railway through an insufficiently opened 
up part of the country. All that individualism claims for the 
landowner or the chattelowner is, that after deducting all 
national claims — when the true, highest interests of the 
community have all been considered — the residual powers 
over land and over chattels shall be vested in some person 
called the proprietor. By this plan it is believed, after an 
experience of ages, that more utility will be squeezed out of the 
thing so " owned " than could be extracted from it under any 
known form of communal holding. I think it was Dr. Siemens 
who said that if he found an invention in the gutter he would 
give it to some one, he would grant him a patent for it, in the 
certainty that by so doing, by making it private property, it 
would have a better chance of coming to perfection and 
benefiting the community than if it were left to such 
community in common. And the same argument has 
since been applied to land ownership by Lord Bramwell. 
How many of the greatest inventions of modern times 
would have been perfected if there had been no patent 
law ? Whenever anything whatever is owned by two 
or more persons having diverse interest in it, some of 
its utilities instead of being enjoyed by all are actually 
enjoyed by none. Every one's experience must bear witness 
to this. 

It is not only the individualist who holds this view. Some 
of the most advanced statesmen in this and other countries 
contend that property in land stimulates the energies of the 
workers and increases enormously the productivity of the soil. 
" Peasant proprietorship " has been the cry of the most zealous 
land reformers of the century, of whom J. S. Mill was chief. 
Occupying ownership is now the cure put forward for the 
incurable by both political parties in Ireland. Socialists 
consistently denounce it. But even Mr. Henry George 
protests against any further land nationalisation than a heavy 
land-tax, for the same reason, viz. that separate ownership in 
land stimulates production. In fine, rent is the cheapest form 
in which payment for certain necessary services can be 
made by the community. Any other mode of obtaining those 



VI THE LABOUR QUESTION 163 

services would be comparatively extravagant. And the 
same observation applies in part to the payment of interest on 
capital of other kinds. It would be impossible for authors 
to prove an " abstract right " to a monopoly of the copy 
of their works. All they can show is, that the community 
gains more than it loses by granting them what is called 
"copyright." The hostility of socialists towards absolute 
rights which have no existence reveals a weak place in their 
philosophy. 

Another socialistic fallacy (though it is not shared by all 
socialists) is that co-operation is socialistic. It is nothing of 
the sort, by their own definitions. Co-operation is the origin 
and sustaining cause of civilisation. There are two kinds, 
voluntary and compulsory. The latter only is socialistic. In 
voluntary co-operation there is nothing whatever of socialism. 
Trade unionism as such is not socialistic. It has frequently 
adopted socialistic methods, and even now in this country 
supports socialistic measures, but in itself it is merely volun- 
tary co-operation. This mistake is so commonly made that it 
is necessary to expose it at every turn. 

One of the chief of the socialistic fallacies is that 
all wealth is the result of labour. It is further held 
that the value of everything is proportionate to the 
labour that has been bestowed on it (two contradictory 
propositions) and that therefore the labourers have a moral 
right to all existing wealth, an inference which betrays 
an amount of logical ineptitude hardly to be expected of 
serious thinkers. 

These three remarkable contentions may be considered 
together. To begin with, all wealth is not the result of 
labour. Wealth is everything which is useful to man. Thus 
air and water are wealth. But it is unfair to impose a 
definition. Clearly by " wealth " socialists mean that which 
is useful and also valuable (that is, rare enough to be the 
subject of contention). So that we have only to add the 
quality of rarity or difficulty of attainment to any useful 
thing and straightway it becomes a product of labour. Some 
defenders of this article of faith seem to consider their case 
proved if they can show that some slight amount of exertion 



1 64 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

was necessary to the creation of the thing cited, or even to its 
enjoyment. If valuable timber is washed down a swollen river 
it has to be dragged out of the water and cut up before it is 
useful. If a savage gathers a ripe peach he must reach out 
his hand, or walk to the tree and open his mouth, and so on. 
If a large diamond is found by a digger on his first day at the 
fields, we are told not only that he has to pick it up, but also 
that we must remember how many other diggers have been 
toiHng for weeks and found nothing. 

Of course, apart from all this rubbish, the truth is that a 
large proportion of valuable things contain a large element of 
labour in their composition, and almost always some small 
element of original wealth. A ruby ring contains much 
original wealth and comparatively little labour. A violin 
contains much labour and very little original wealth. Other 
things vary in their composition. 

But this abstract theory, baseless though it is, would not 
deserve mention were it not, firstly, that it is a legacy (a 
veritable damnosa hereditas) from Eicardo, and, secondly, 
that it has been made the foundation of the ridiculous practical 
contention in connection with which it is always mentioned, to 
wit, that all wealth being the result of labour, and labour only, 
the manual workers of to-day have a moral claim to all wealth. 

ISTow, if we admit that by far the greater portion of wealth 
contains a vastly predominant proportion of labour element, 
which is the fact — nay, if we go so far as to admit that all 
wealth is entirely composed of the labour element, which is not 
the fact — ^how does this affect the practical inference ? A 
century ago, let us suppose, there were two workmen. Smith 
and Brown. Smith was a good, steady, and industrious 
worker ; Brown was an idle fellow. Smith managed to put 
by a little money and to leave his son enough to set himself 
up as an employer. Smith the second inherits his father's 
good qualities, and converts his competency into a fortune. 
Brown leaves nothing, and Brown the second follows in his 
father's footsteps. IsTow comes the third generation. Smith 
the third begins life as a wealthy man. He has no occasion 
to work with his hands. The labour of his ancestors enables 
him to live in idleness if he chooses, instead of which he applies 



VI THE LABOUR QUESTION 165 

himself to the study of the sciences, or the fine arts, or politics. 
He invents an ingenious labour-saving machine, or makes dis- 
coveries in astronomy or chemistry which add to the world's 
stock of knowledge ; or he composes a fine epic or a grand 
oratorio ; or he takes a seat in Parliament and labours for the 
freedom and elevation of his fellow-countrymen. Brown the 
third begins life as an unskilled labourer ; he digs and wheels 
and carries. Suddenly up springs the socialist. " This won't 
do," says he ; " you. Brown, have a right to Smith's wealth ; it 
is all the result of labour, and you are a labourer, while he is 
not ; this anomaly must be put right." Could any contention 
be more absurd or more unjust ? The fallacy consists in con- 
cluding that, because the creator of wealth has a right to the 
fruits of his labour, therefore existing labourers have a right to 
the fruits of past labour. lN"ow, the missing link in the chain 
of this reasoning has not altogether escaped the attention of 
some of the more logical thinkers of the school. " We admit," 
say some of them, " that if Smith the first had gone on living 
and working for a century, and had himself amassed the whole 
of the fortune, he would have been justified in resting on his 
oars and enjoying the fruits of his work ; but instead of that, 
this fortune has come into the hands of Smith the third, who 
has never done a stitch of bread -winning work in his life. 
This is unjust to society, upon whom he relies for susten- 
ance." 

It is clear that this further contention strikes at the root 
of gift and bequest. According to this view it logically 
follows that no man has the right to enjoy the fruits of 
another man's labour even with the consent and by the desire 
of that other, not even though the two men are father and 
son ; and the reason alleged is that a man who appears to be 
living on his capital is in reality living on the labour of those 
around him. At this point socialists are divided in counsel. 
Some would (most illogically) permit gift but prohibit bequest. 
They fail to see the impossibility of distinguishing in practice 
between the two. Of donatio mortis causa they have probably 
never heard, nor of the numerous devices by which legacy 
and succession duty have been eluded. But perhaps these 
questions are a little too practical for the bulk of that 



1 66 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

somewhat dreamy school.-^ However this may be, those who 
would prohibit either gift or bequest, or both, base their action 
on what may be styled the socialist fallacy 'par excellence, 
viz. that interest is necessarily paid out of the fruits of the 
labour of to-day. On this point I must be pardoned for again 
quoting from our Westminster reviewer : — 

" If a man possesses three or four thousand pounds he can 
invest them, and live all his life long on the interest without 
ever doing a stroke of honest work, and can then bequeath to 
some one else the right to live in idleness, and so on in 
perpetuity. Money in the capitalist system is like the 
miraculous oil in the widow's cruse — it can always be spent 
and never exhausted. A man in sixty years will have 
received in interest at five per cent three times his original 
fortune, and although he may have spent the interest, and thus 
have spent every penny of his fortune three times over, he will 
yet possess his fortune as large as it was when he began. He 
has consumed in commodities three times the sum originally 
owned, and yet is not one penny the worse. Other people 
have laboured for him, fed him, clothed him, housed him, and 
he has done nothing in exchange." 

Here truly we have the socialist fallacy in a nut -shell. 
The illustration is a good one. Capital is compared to the oil 
in the widow's cruse in the story. A truer comparison could 
not be found. Capital fructifies. A man who lives on the 
interest on his capital costs nobody else anything whatever. 
If he and his capital were annihilated to-day nobody would be 
any the richer to-morrow. If he lived on half the interest on his 
capital his wealth would go on increasing year by year at no 
cost to any one. It is not true that " it can only be increased 
by other people's labour being left unpaid for while he is paid 
twice over for his." It is not true that it can only be 
increased by other people's labour being left even 'partly 
unpaid for. It grows of itself like a tree. 

Again, I find myself at issue not only with socialists, but 
with our " orthodox political economists." When the socialist 

^ I do not wish to be too sweeping in these charges. I have read some very- 
ingenious suggestions on this subject published by the Fabian Society, but though 
ingenious they are to my mind highly unsatisfactory and impracticable. 



VI THE LABOUR QUESTION 167 

triumphantly asserts that " capital always has been, and 
always must be, obtained by the partial confiscation of the 
results of labour," there is not a single economist living or 
dead who can be called to refute the statement. All their 
writings without exception, from Adam Smith downwards, 
either imply the conclusion or express the premises from 
which the conclusion must logically follow. There is no 
escape. The reasoning is faultless. Marx has strung the 
links together in a chain without a flaw. Yet what is the 
consequence of accepting the proposition ? Two courses of 
action only are open to us. We may go on on our present 
lines, recognising the fact that capitalists are robbers living on 
the extorted toil of others, that U proprieU cest le vol, or 
we may abolish property. Political economists, which shall we 
do ? You leave us no alternative. All capital you tell us is 
the result of labour and abstinence. Now, abstinence cannot 
create ; it can leave unconsumed, but it cannot increase what 
exists. Therefore all capital whatever, on your own showing, 
must be the result of labour. If so, clearly the increment of 
capital which results from a successful industrial operation, 
and which you are pleased to call profits, must really be the 
result of labour alone. Capital left to accumulate at interest 
must increase, on your own arguments, by having laid upon it 
layer after layer of the fruits of labour — the labour not of the 
owner of the capital, but of other jpeople. 

Leaving our orthodox friends to get out of the mess as 
best they can, let us pass at once to the true solution. 

Capital fructifies. On the average in this country the 
total wealth employed in production (not counting the value of 
the thirty millions of workers at slave prices) increases 
annually by about three per cent. In order that wealth may 
increase it is necessary that, instead of being enjoyed, it should 
be destroyed — that each portion should be thrown into the 
crucible, so to speak, together with other portions. The 
compound resulting from the synthesis is worth either more or 
less than the original elements. If less, the process is not 
likely to be often repeated ; if more, the increment of value is 
called profit. One of the elements cast into the melting-pot, 
not without risk, is labour force. The proportion of this 



i68 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

element is sometimes large and sometimes small. Whoever 
undertakes the risk of casting bread upon the waters must 
suffer the loss, if there is a loss, and must pocket the profit if 
there is a profit. This seems just, and its expediency is 
demonstrated by experience. Naturally profiting by ex- 
perience, cautious men engage in those processes which have 
heretofore resulted in a profit, and therefore the balance on all 
the operations in the year is a favourable one. On the average 
every £100 worth of wealth employed in production rather 
than consumption comes out worth about £103.-^ Clearly, if 
it were a mere " toss-up " whether profit or loss would accrue, 
the average would be nil : wealth would be stationary ; capital 
would not be invested ; and the national consumption would 
destroy the whole of it within a few years. 

Now, if an idle man, not caring to take even the trouble 
to look into the chances of his investments, were to divide his 
capital up into as many fractions as there are industries (a 
hypothetical supposition, of course), and to invest one fraction 
in each industry, he would lose on some ventures and gain on 
others ; on the balance, the chances are that he would gain 
about three per cent on the whole lot, taking good and bad 
together. Now this operation of investing without risk {i.e. 
with no greater risk than is involved in trusting to the 
national sanity) is called "putting out at interest." By 
investing on what is called absolute security we are really 
investing at average national profit. Economic interest is 
average profit — average profit after the elimination of the 
element of risk. 

Any increased gain over and above interest on capital is 

the reward of, not abstinence, but risk. Business men as a 

rule write off a certain part of gross profits as interest, because 

they well know that such portion does not represent the reward 

of risk or of skill in planning the investment, but merely the 

normal average groiuth of capital. This custom of business men 

has led political economists to invent the most fantastic and 

1 I assume for the sake of simplicity that the operation lasts a year, like most 
agricultural processes. When the operation is quicker the average profit is pro- 
portionately smaller, and when the operation is lengthier the profit is proportion- 
ately higher. Average profits, however, in the several well-tried processes vary 
for other reasons which need not be gone into here — v. Wealth of Nations. 



I 



VI THE LABOUR QUESTION 169 

misleading definitions and explanations of interest. No wonder 
our captains of industry make common cause with the working 
classes in denouncing and despising the methods and conclusions 
of this pseudo-science. Practical men have long since ceased to 
attach any importance to the slip-shod twaddle of those who 
pose as the theorists of the art of wealth-producing ; but, oddly 
enough, the socialists have hastened to detect and take advan- 
tage of their convenient and suitable vapourings and sententious 
dogmas. Amongst other handy weapons they have seized upon 
the " orthodox " definition of capital. " What is capital ? " 
asks the socialist reviewer, " and how has it come into exist- 
ence ? " The answer is supplied at once by the " orthodox." 
" Capital is any wealth which is employed for profit. On this 
there is no dispute." Is there not ? A glance at the conflicting 
definitions of a dozen of the chief representatives of political 
economy would somewhat shatter this comfortable faith. Why, 
Mill, Say, Fawcett, M'CuUoch, Bastiat, and a whole crowd of 
other accepted authorities all give definitions, and no two are, 
alike. I refer not to the wording but to the sense and mean- 
ing. However, Senior is chosen, and he says, " Economists are 
agreed that whatever gives a profit is called capital." In the 
first place they are not agreed, and in the second it would not 
matter if they were, as the proposition is unintelligible. What 
does he mean by " gives a profit " ? Does he mean to say that 
those particular things which, having been employed for the 
purpose of production, actually have resulted in a profit, were 
or might have been called capital, while similar things employed 
in a losing speculation were not capital ? Or does he mean 
that certain general classes of things which are fit to be em- 
ployed in production are capital ? Or does he (with Fawcett) 
mean that things which are intended to be devoted to produc- 
tion, whether suitable or not, by being exchanged for suitable 
things, are capital ? Or does he mean anything at all ? I 
suppose the wind that propels the ship or drives the mill-sail 
" gives a profit." Is it capital ? Money spent in sinking a 
shaft in the expectation of finding coal, and finding none, gives 
no profit. Is it capital ? The time spent in analysing such 
" definitions " as this and the like of it certainly gives no profit. 
I must be pardoned therefore for stating dogmatically what I 



I70 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLIIICS chap. 

have shown in the foregoing chapter that capital is all that 
wealth whose value is due to the demand for it as an element 
of production, and not for the purposes of direct con- 
sumption. It follows that labourers (or labour force, if pre- 
ferred) are themselves capital, and every labourer is himself 
a capitalist to the extent of possessing a valuable machine 
whose market value is due to the demand for workers as 
agents of production. 

This effectually disposes of one logical objection to 
supplanting wage payment by any form of profit-sharing. 
" Capital and labour being two distinct and, in a sense, opposed 
agents of production, there must be something wrong about a 
practical plan which confounds them together in respect of 
their remuneration." And if we admit the truth of the premiss 
we cannot well refuse to accept the inference. If capital and 
labour actually are distinct agents of production, as political 
economists assure us, then there is something unphilosophical 
in classing them together for the purpose of apportioning their 
respective shares in the new product. In that case labour 
must be content with its wages, and capital must take the whole 
of the profits, and the situation resulting is the one we all 
see before us, and which is so graphically described by Mrs. 
Besant. 

" Here is this unpropertied class, this naked proletariat, face to face 
with landlord and capitalist, who hold in their grip tlie means of subsist- 
ence. It must reach those means of subsistence or starve. The terms 
laid down for its acceptance are clear and decisive : ' We will place 
within your hands the means of existence if you will produce sufficient to 
support us as well as yourselves, and if you will consent that the whole 
of your produce, over that which is sufficient to support you in a hardy, 
frugal life, shall be the property of us and of our children. If you are 
very thrifty, very self-denying, and very lucky, you may be able to save 
enough out of your small share of your produce to feed yourself in your 
old age, and so avoid falling back on us. Your children will tread the 
same mill-round, and we hope you will remain contented with the position 
in which Providence has placed you, and not envy those born to a higher 
lot.' Needless to say, the terms are accepted by a proletariat ignorant of 
its own strength, and the way to profit is open to landlord and 
capitalist." 

Having examined the socialist remedy and the arguments 
on which it is based, let us now turn to the neo-radical remedy. 



THE LABOUR QUESTION 



The neo-radical is of the thoroughly English type of thinker 
who never accepts any principle except " to a certain limited 
extent, don't you know." He is always pointing out that " a 
line must be drawn somewhere," but where, he never seems to 
know or care, so that it is drawn somewhere. He believes in 
self-help and laissez-faire, "to a certain limited extent." He 
also believes in State interference and socialism " to a certain 
limited extent." He is the incarnation of the spirit of com- 
promise, even where compromise is impossible. But being the 
resultant, so to speak, of robust English common sense and of 
crass ignorance and lopsided education, he naturally finds him- 
self in an increasing majority in the country along with the 
successive passing of the three great Eeform Acts. Con- 
sequently we have to deal with the neo-radical remedy not as 
the consistent and well-thought-out nostrum of doctrinaires, 
but as the half-hammered-out jumble of conflicting schemes 
and " dodges " of practical politicians. Of course, if these were 
confined to paper, no one would give them so much as a pass- 
ing glance. One would as soon think of catechising Hodge as 
to his theory of the Cosmos, as of inquiring into the political 
principles of the neo-radical, the muddle-headed, knee-deep 
State sociaHst. He has none, of course ; but he has succeeded 
in carrying into effect what we must, I suppose, call his ideas. 
We have had some half century of increasing State socialism, 
not in the form of a creed to addle the brains of fanatics, but 
in the form of actual operative legislation — of practical politics. 
Perhaps on a survey of all these odds and ends of " beneficent 
legislation " one is able to extract something like a pervading 
notion, viz. the principle of attacking evil on the spot wherever 
it shows itself, whether in the form of want, of misery, of crime, 
of discontent, or of sin. If a hole appears fill it up ; if an 
excrescence shows itself cut it off. Direct local application, as 
opposed to general hygienic treatment, is the neo-radical's 
watchword. " Are you suffering from headache ? " he asks, 
" then have a pick-me-up." " Is that a wart ? Cut it off." 
" There is a rash on your chest. A cold douche will throw it 
in and cause it to disappear." And so on. He never inquires 
whether you are suffering from bad diet or unhealthy habits of 
life, or whether all your ailments may not be effects of the 



172 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

same cause. He has assumed the name of Eadical on the 
lucus a non lucendo principle, because he never goes to the 
roots of the malady. With him to arrest the symptoms is to 
cure the disease. If some parents send their little ones too 
young into the dark mines and clattering factories, he sends 
inspectors to turn them out again. It never occurs to him to 
inquire what dire necessities have concurred to drive parents 
to such cruel extremities, or whether, if due to sheer hard- 
heartedness, the demoralisation of the workers may not be 
attributed to some deep-seated social disorder. If parental 
love is not strong enough to ensure the welfare of the children 
he has no hesitation in substituting State love for it. The 
effects of weakening the family affections are unknown to him 
as recorded in the history of the past. He has probably never 
even heard of Sparta. As to its probable effects in the future 
they do not present themselves to his frigid imagination. 
Naturally, if he is not afraid to meddle with the delicate frame- 
work of family life, it is not likely that he will keep his hands 
off the somewhat rougher systems of industrial co-operation. 
Every trade has some screw loose ; growing organisations take 
time and experience to attain to perfection. But the neo- 
radical has no patience to wait ; he will cure the defects at 
once himself. Are sailors occasionally drowned at sea ? It is 
clearly due to overlading. He will cure all that, so he takes 
his bit of chalk and draws his load-line. " Now," says he to 
the ship-owner, " you may not load above that." A few years 
elapse ; the new legislation has been in full working order all 
the time, and lo ! the number of seamen lost at sea has increased. 
What is to be done ? Oh ! it is all as plain as a pike-staff to 
our neo-radical : it is over-insurance that does it. We must 
pass a short Act of Parliament to stop that. It is a noteworthy 
fact that if the matter to be dealt with is shipping, it is sure 
to be taken in hand by some one (perhaps a Derbyshire coal- 
owner) who has never seen the sea in his life. If factories 
want looking to, the work is undertaken by some noble earl 
whose experience of factory work is limited to being " shown 
round the premises," as Catherine of Eussia was shown round 
the happy village greens during the famine. If shop hours 
want regulating the proper neo-radical for the job is some 



VI THE LABOUR QUESTION 173 

barrister out of work. The education of the people falls to the 
care of some self-made lace manufacturer, whose own education 
reflects more credit on himself than on his teachers. I well 
remember that the demand for more mines regulation legisla- 
tion was most strenuously advocated by a London journeyman 
tailor ; while most of the happy ideas for reforming agricultural 
relations emanate from Birmingham. 

The reason for this strange allotment of duties is obvious. 
The man who knows most about the business to be reformed, 
knows too well the difficulties to be overcome and the impossi- 
bility of effecting the end aimed at. The young subaltern, who 
bungles his theodolite and votes fortification stultification, 
would undertake the conquest of China with a light heart. 
Have you never heard a little boy of ten summers say what he 
would do if he found himself surrounded in a wood by a gang 
of robbers ? If not, ask one, and you will find the germ of 
neo-radicalism : it is a compound of self-confidence and blissful 
ignorance. 

It is usually taken for granted that neo-radical legislation, 
whether good or bad for the country as a whole, is at least an 
unqualified boon to the wage receivers. Without inquiring 
into the general results of such measures, let us see how the 
working classes are affected by them. To begin with the 
Poor Law, apart from its possible utility as a safety-valve against 
revolution, there can be no doubt that nothing operates 
with so deadening effect upon charity as compulsion ; and, 
after all, true charity is sometimes good for both giver and 
receiver. 

But neither should the demoralising effects of State charity 
upon its recipients be lost sight of. In the present state of 
the Poor Law these effects are somewhat toned down, and 
for a vivid and unmistakable illustration of the conse- 
quences of pauperisation we should refer to the times when 
the principle was carried out consistently, that is to say, 
before 1834. 

The famous 43d of Elizabeth had been amplified by the 
passing of East's Act in 1815, under which relief was granted 
by the justices as a matter of course on the mere application 
of the pauper or professing, pauper. " The administration and 



174 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

operation of the state of the law thus established quickly 
absorbed so large and so increasing a part of the public re- 
sources, and brought about so prevailing an amount of idle- 
ness, improvidence, insolence, turbulence, and vice, that nine- 
teen years from the passing of East's Act it was found 
necessary to pass a large remedial measure in order to prevent 
the destruction of landed property, the diversion of capital 
from the cultivation of the land, and the utter demoralisation 
and pauperisation of the great mass of the population — to 
prevent, in short, national ruin." ^ 

The same writer expresses the opinion that the Eeport of 
the Poor Law Inquiry Commission, together with the evidence 
appended, deserves to be read by every one who wishes to 
learn the manner in which a law of compulsory relief affects 
the material and social welfare of the poorer classes. In the 
words of the Eeport, " It appears to the pauper that Government 
has undertaken to repeal in his favour the ordinary laws of 
nature ; to enact that children shall not suffer for the mis- 
conduct of their parents ; that no one shall lose the means of 
comfortable subsistence, whatever be his indolence, prodigality, 
or vice ; in short, that the penalty which after all must be 
paid by some one for idleness and improvidence is to fall, not 
on the guilty party or on his family, but on the ratepayers." 

ISTor does all this apply only to a time when the principle 
of compulsory charity was carried to an inordinate extreme. 
" Still," to follow Mr. Pretyman, " the man who might find 
employment if he felt that it were necessary to his subsistence, 
or the man who is reduced to want by self-indulgence, can tax 
the public for his support. Still the woman who has parted 
with her virtue can cast upon the ratepayers the burden of 
maintaining her offspring. Still men who are in receipt of 
permanent parish relief marry with the result that child after 
child is born and reared in a state of pauperism, and frequently 
to an inheritance of disease. Still is early and improvident 
marriage encouraged by the law. Still the husband can, by 
deserting his wife and children, throw their maintenance upon 
the public." 

Next in importance to the State supply of the necessaries 

^ Dispauperisation, by J. R, Pretyman, M.A., Longmans, Green, and Co. 



VI THE LABOUR QUESTION 175 

of life to those who are individually in a state of absolute 
destitution comes the supply at less than cost price of certain 
necessaries and commodities, and even luxuries, to the poor as 
a whole class. It is a fact, for instance, that in some poor 
neighbourhoods like the East End of London, water is supplied 
at less than cost price. It is obvious that the water companies 
are compelled to charge their other customers more than they 
otherwise would in order to cover this loss. The argument put 
forward in defence of this course is a very strong one, whether 
we regard it as sufficient or not. It is said that if the poor 
have to pay for water ad valorem they naturally economise 
as much as possible, and more than is consistent with the 
sanitary condition of the neighbourhood. If so, it may possibly 
be a wise insurance on the part of society to supply the water 
at less than the cost of delivery. But the inhabitants of these 
poor localities must not suppose that they obtain any pecuniary 
gain by the arrangement. 

Similarly with cheap trains and cheap dwellings, which 
may be considered together. Whenever the optimists begin to 
glory over enhanced wages " during the last forty years," the 
workers (especially London workers) very properly reply : Yes, 
but look at the enhanced rents. It ought to be obvious to the 
workers that if an employer wants hands at a particular spot 
he must pay such wages as will enable his workpeople to pay 
the rent demanded at or near that spot, or else to pay the rail- 
way fare from a more distant and cheaper locality. If rents in 
the neighbourhood come down, down come wages. If by com- 
petition, or improvements in mechanical knowledge, or by com- 
pulsory Cheap Trains Acts, or any other cause, railway travel- 
ling to and from the spot is rendered cheaper, down go wages. 
That neo-radicals should offer Artisans' Dwellings Acts to the 
people is intelligible enough, but that they should be backed 
up by intelligent socialists who accept the " iron law of wages," 
and who therefore must know that the employer will necessarily 
gobble up all that his workpeople may appear to gain from low 
rents or cheap trains, passes all understanding. However, so 
it is. To the workman himself who will but consider the 
question in the light of common sense it must appear abun- 
dantly evident that so long as the manual workers put up with 



176 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

the wage system, all neo-radical sops of this nature are the 
merest mockery. To be plain, the employer of labour, who 
votes for measures of this character in the House of Commons, 
while he is offering fine phrases to his victims with his tongue 
in his cheek, is in reality merely offering himself a handsome 
present at the expense of the nation. But if he thus pleases 
the working-class voters, and puts money into his pocket at 
the same time without incurring the censure of any one, who 
shall find fault with him ? He is asked for bread and he 
gives a stone ; he is asked for an egg and he gives a scorpion ; 
but he gets the donee's best thanks for his generosity, and 
pockets a round sum into the bargain. Verily make to your- 
selves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, for they 
know on which side their bread is buttered. 

When we come to what may be called State-doled luxuries 
the advantage to the working classes becomes still less apparent. 
Tree libraries, free picture galleries, free museums, all paid for 
out of the State treasury or out of the rates, are probably a 
boon to those who have time and leisure to make ample use of 
them. But whether the Northumbrian miner or the Galway 
peasant ever receives his qiiid jpro quo for the hundreds of 
thousands of pounds raised by taxation and spent on " pictures 
of national interest" is a question which the miner and the 
peasant must answer for themselves. It may be that membership 
of a community which possesses such treasures, even without 
the hope of ever catching a glimpse of them, is in itself a 
sufficient reward. 

I forget how much over eighty thousand pounds was spent 
by this nation, with its million paupers, on the fiasco expedi- 
tion to the North Pole a few years ago under Captain Nares. 
But all-important as scientific exploration and experiment 
undoubtedly are, it is a question whether, — if those who have 
had the necessary educational opportunities to interest them- 
selves in these matters are not numerous enough or public- 
spirited enough to find the sinews of war out of their own 
pockets without exacting a contribution from those who are 
struggling to put bread into their children's mouths, — it might 
not be as well to let such inquiries stand over till the rich 
are in a position to dispense with the assistance of the poor. 



VI THE LABOUR QUESTION 177 

Apart from these considerations it may, I think, be affirmed 
that an artificial supply — that is, a supply which is not in 
response to a natural demand — has a tendency to induce 
a morbid appetite. For example, " in nearly all the free pub- 
lic libraries prose fiction is in most demand, religion in least." "^ 
The latter part of the indictment is serious or not, according 
as the people of whom it is true is a professedly religious 
people or not ; but in any case it seems a sad waste of public 
money to provide the lazy with a mental pabulum which, 
in the words of Sir Theodore Martin, " brings creeping 
paralysis upon their brains, by steeping them in the trivial- 
ities of flimsy magazines and catch-penny novels that grow 
up and perish like the summer fly." 

Our picture galleries have hardly yet come so far under the 
like influences as to become depraved by pandering to the tastes 
of the listless, but the time cannot be far distant. As for free 
museums, one might almost as correctly speak of free out-door 
winter midnight services. They are not popular. As a 
frequent visitor to the N'atural History Museum at South 
Kensington I am bound to say that, considering its rich and 
varied treasures, and the care which has been bestowed upon 
them, the emptiness of its well-arranged galleries is simply 
deplorable. 

In favour of public State-aided baths and wash-houses the 
same argument applies which is urged on behalf of cheap water 
— water under cost price — namely, that they are safeguards 
against dirt and disease. This may be so, but the time will 
come in which the respectable poor will resent the implication 
that, unless they are washed at the expense of their richer 
neighbours, they will remain dirty. Similarly their self-respect 
will rebel against such degrading charity as Cheap Trains Acts 
and Education Acts confer. Clearly, if certain third-class 
passengers are carried at less than the normal profit on railway 
investments, the remaining passengers must pay the balance — 
not the shareholders and not the nation. The indirect effect 
may be to restrict the operations of the company, but directly 
the only effect is to compel one class to pay part of the fares 
of the other class. 

1 Westminster Review, July 1886. 
N 



178 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

What are the arguments for State education ? The first is 
that education is good, which is true or not according to the 
meaning of the word " education." If it means teaching Greek 
to a child who will soon want to know something of agriculture, 
or teaching plumbing to one who is going to be a solicitor's 
clerk, or any similar substitution of that which is good for that 
which is better, then I should say decidedly that education is 
a bad thing. Whether the School Boards provide the suitable 
or the unsuitable at the present time may be an open question, 
but we must remember that the State department as now con- 
stituted is young and fresh, and like all new brooms it ought 
^rimd facie to sweep clean. The very worst quality of razor 
shaves well at first. Time only discloses its inferiority. At 
present in line with the more advanced thinkers, what will it 
be in a hundred years, when, like all State institutions, it has 
fallen behind the age — when it has been fastened upon by 
parasitic officialism, and represents the " authorised " creed of 
a bygone generation ? Have we forgotten that the State has 
undertaken the education of the people before ? that a tax of 
one-tenth of the produce of the land was imposed for that pur- 
pose? that the education provided was "free and compulsory," 
just as hanging is at the present day for all who are duly 
qualified ? ITo doubt in the days of Charlemagne and Alfred 
such education was up to the level of the age, but whether it 
still fulfils all the requirements of an educational curriculum is 
a question which is answered by the establishment of a new 
and improved national organ. 

The second argument for State education is, that the supply 
of the desired quality through independent channels is not 
forthcoming ; that the instruction administered to the children 
in the voluntary schools was unduly admixed with effete matter. 
There is much truth in this, but the neo-radical action based 
on the observation was hasty and ill-considered. The mind of 
the country was steadily expanding, and this well-meant attempt 
at compulsory evolution will probably in the end operate rather 
as a check than as an impetus. 

But a third contention implied in State education is that 
even when supplied in good condition the demand for education 
is restricted. Having artificially created a supply, the neo- 



VI THE LABOUR QUESTION 179 

radical proceeds to create an artificial demand. When provided 
by the State, the " lower orders " will not purchase it at cost 
price. Such is the weakness of parental love that parents will 
not confer upon their children what kind neo-radicals consider 
good for them. What is to be done now ? Clearly State love 
must be substituted for parental love. Parents must be coerced 
to supply their little ones with the approved mental food. 
Education is made " compulsory." A little experience soon 
convinces our philanthropists that it is not so much a lack of 
parental love as a lack of parental funds that stands between 
the children and the good things provided for them. Education 
must be free, that is to say, everybody must be educated for 
nothing, which means, being interpreted, that everybody must 
pay for everybody else's education and get his own gratis. 

When education has been " free and compulsory " for a few 
years it will be found that a large number of persons do not want 
it at any price. They will rebel against compulsory attendance 
just as they now rebel against compulsory fees. They can in 
many cases provide a better and more suitable education for 
their children from their own point of view than is provided by 
the State schools, and they will prefer to bring them up as well- 
trained agriculturists, or plumbers, or farriers, rather than to 
have them trained as clerks in the Government mould with the 
ignominious condition imposed of accepting compulsory alms. 
The strongest argument in favour of all these forms of State 
charity is that if the classes thus insultingly pauperised do not 
see the insult, the act loses its contumely and becomes a mere 
act of patronage. It is sometimes a relief when the respectable 
man whom one has diffidently " tipped," pockets the tip 
and the insult, touches his hat, and expresses his thanks. 

The next class of neo-radical State interferences, ostensibly 
in favour of the wage receivers (though they glide imperceptibly 
one into the other) embraces compulsory rest, compulsory 
insurance, and compulsory security. The first is provided for 
by a number of Acts relating to Factories, Bank Holidays, Shop 
Hours Eegulation, Sunday Closing, Lord's Day Observance, and 
the like : the effect of which is to prescribe fixed limits to the 
working hours of women, children, and young persons, at all 
times and in all occupations ; and in the case of men, on 



i8o INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

specified days and in certain occupations. Indirectly, of course, 
the Factory Acts have the effect, by turning out the female 
hands, of compelling owners to close their factories, and so to 
force the full-grown men to rest, if not to be thankful. 
Whether they have cause to be thankful must depend on the 
financial position of the worker. As a specimen of the light in 
which workmen as a class regard compulsory idleness (or say 
rest) I will quote one letter written by a dock labourer to the 
Editor of a Eadical newspaper : — 

" Sir — In your ' Topics of the Day ' of last week you refer to the 
closing of the banks at two on Saturdays, and make some remarks about 
the bank employes, in which I quite agree ; but what I want to call 
your attention to is another class of employes, and that is dock 
labourers, and how it may affect them. I remind you that the docks 
are under the control of the Customs, and I am told that it is being 
mooted to extend the favour to the Customs. If they get it, how will 
it affect tens of thousands of poor dock labourers ? It is only the 
permanent staff in the docks that get paid for holidays, which does not 
amount to more than 5 per cent, the other 95 being paid by the 
hour. At the present time eight hours per day is the time for work, 
but after this month seven hours per day for the next four months. 
It may seem a small matter, but is a great matter to those concerned 
in it. If a man is fortunate enough to get a day's work in the winter, 
he gets 2s. lid., and should the docks close at two o'clock, he will only 
get 2s. Id., so that it will affect the whole of the dock labourers (extra 
men) of the country. 

And now I will say a word as to how Bank Holidays affect dock 
labourers. In the past the Act of Parliament got it for the banks 
first, after which it was extended to the Customs, and so dosedu the. docks, 
and closed the dock labourers^ mouths — for it is little they get to put in 
them on those days. And while I am writing I will mention the extra 
holiday the Customs have, viz. the Queen's Birthday, which is supposed 
to be a day of rejoicing, but I can assure you that it is a day of moaning 
and cursing amongst the class I am speaking about, and to which I 
belong. I hope this will meet the eye of some of your M.P.'s, and that 
they wiU give us a little consideration. 

I am. Sir, yours, etc. A Dock Labourer." ^ 

The writer naturally makes the mistake of supposing that 
the 5 per cent of employes on the permanent staff "get 
paid for holidays." This is a common error. Work is paid 
according to its value ; and if fifty days in the year are added 

1 WeeUy Dispatch, October 10, 1886. 



VI THE LABOUR QUESTION i8i 

to the compulsory holidays, one -seventh is struck off the pay 
of the workers. 

It seems hard that in a country where an owner of dumb 
animals can be prosecuted for overworking them, a parent or 
an employer should be allowed to overwork human beings. 
And this is of some force in defending these Acts so far as 
children and young persons are concerned ; though the im- 
plication must be distinctly borne in mind that working-class 
parents are cruel enough for the sake of gain to overwork 
their children. I do not believe it. The class as a class, so 
long as wagedom lasts, is bound, parent and child, to do more 
work, or rather to work for a longer time, than is good for 
health of mind or body ; but I deny that the working classes, 
as a rule, allow their children to be overworked from the 
standpoint of their permanent necessities. In any case, to 
remove the care of the children from the shoulders of parents 
on to the shoulders of the State is to still further weaken 
the parental sense of responsibility. A little good may 
possibly accrue to the rising generation, but the ultimate and 
permanent effect must be to demoralise and degrade the race. 

There are certain other indirect evil consequences of this 
kind of legislation which the neo-radical has clearly overlooked. 
It is often pointed out that if the working hours of English 
operatives are shortened, the foreigner will have an immense 
advantage in competition. To which the reply always is, that 
the labour question is an international one, and that if all 
civilised nations put a compulsory limit on the hours of work 
no one would lose. Meantime, apart from the untruth of this 
last statement, while the neo-radical is in a hurry, other 
nations are in no hurry, and the consequence is that whether 
the labour question should be international or not, the foreigner is 
at present taking advantage of the short hours of the British 
workman. I have already pointed out that I regard even 
those hours as too long, but I maintain that they cannot be 
shortened wisely under a system of labour payment which 
offers no inducement to make up in intensity for what is lost 
in time. A free English workman under a system of capitalisa- 
tion could do in six hours more than a foreign wage -slave 
would do in twelve. Meantime he works in the same way, 



1 82 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

and the country pays a hundred millions a year for his extra 
two hours' rest a day. 

Why, again, in these days of electric lighting should capital 
rest in the night time ? Journalists, actors, some cab -drivers, 
railway servants, postmen, policemen, and hundreds of others 
do the major portion of their work when the rest of the world 
is snoring. Why not some factory operatives ? In the mines 
and the furnaces where there are no women, and where con- 
sequently the Factory Acts do not apply, we have a succession 
of shifts. It is not proposed that the hands should work 
twenty-four hours a day, but there should be three shifts of 
eight hours each ; by which the dream of the rhyming 
workman would be realised : — 

" Eight hours' work, eight hours' play, 
Eight hours' sleep, and eight bob a day." 

This consummation (with the exception of the last item) has 
actually been reached in benighted and despotic Eussia, where 
no foolish kindly -intentioned Factory Acts interfere with 
private enterprise. 

Again, are the following suggestions worth a little reflec- 
tion ? I have no intention of entering into a theological con- 
troversy, but I suppose few persons have conceived the idea of 
calculating the cost in pounds, shillings, and pence of Sunday, 
as it is at present observed in this country. Such a calculation 
is not a very difficult one, while it presents several features of 
interest. 

Before coming to figures, however, let us pave the way by 
an inquiry into the nature and foundation of our English 
institution of Sunday observance. Two reasons are commonly 
alleged. The first is, of course, the rehgious one that to rest 
on the seventh day is a divine ordinance ; the second is that 
workers of all classes are all the better for a rest or holiday 
once a week. With respect to the first, every one knows that 
according to the authority the day appointed to be kept holy 
is the Saturday or Jewish Sabbath ; nor is there any passage 
in the Testaments which can be adduced in support of the 
substitution of the first for the seventh day. 

Without going farther into this part of the question 



VI THE LABOUR QUESTION 183 

probably most enlightened Christians will admit that what is 
required is that every person shall set apart one day in the 
week as a holiday, into the mode of spending which there may 
be differences of opinion. Some persons will go farther, and 
contend that one day in the week is too little for some kinds 
of work and too much for other kinds. Tor the present 
purpose I may accept the uniform system of one day in seven. 
]^ow if it is immaterial, even from a Christian point of view, 
upon which particular day of the week we fix, it is clearly 
of equal unimportance whether all of us fix upon the same day 
or upon different days. 

With respect to the second or hygienic reason above 
referred to, these observations apply with even greater force, 
for it obviously cannot signify whether we rest on the first, 
fourth, or seventh day, provided we get the amount of recrea- 
tion required. 

Now what again, if any, would accrue from the establish- 
ment of seven Sabbaths in the week ? in other words, from a 
division of the days of the week among the labouring classes 
in suchwise that one -seventh of our workers are always 
enjoying a holiday. Some would have the Mondays, others the 
Tuesdays, others the Wednesdays, and so on throughout the 
week. It may seem at first sight that such an arrangement 
would make no difference to the work done or to the value of 
the work, but this is a mistake. It is true that no more 
hours' work would be performed than now, but the labour 
would be both better paid and more productive. And the 
reason is this. Under the present system we give our 
labourers a weekly holiday, and we also give our capital a 
weekly holiday — our engines, our warehouses, our stock our 
plant, etc. This is pure waste. ISTot even the most scrupulous 
Sabbatarian will maintain that an engine ought to rest for one 
whole day in the week. N'ow, roughly speaking, capital may 
be said to contribute two -thirds towards production against 
one-third contributed by labour (in more correct parlance, the 
non-human capital contributes about twice as much as the 
human). The immediate effect of depriving this non -human 
capital of its rest-day would be virtually to increase its quantity 
by one -seventh. Thus, the present proportion between the 



1 84 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

values of the two elements of production would be modified. 
By the law of value relating to co- elements we see that this 
would bring about a considerable rise in the price of labour. 
The law is as follows : Other things equal, a rise in the value 
of one CO -element is followed \)j e, fall in the values of all the 
other co-elements, and a fall by a rise, but not necessarily at 
the same rate. Now, labourers and machinery, etc., are co- 
elements ; the old theory of rivalry has been long ago exploded. 
Hence, together with a cheapening of production all along the 
line, we should have the equally satisfactory concomitant of a 
rise in wages. This stimulated demand would eventually call 
into existence an increase of population equal to about one- 
seventh of the number of the labouring class. A more 
immediate result would be an increase in production, equal to 
about two -thirds of one -seventh of the present amount, in 
round numbers an increase of one -tenth, or over a hundred 
million pounds a year — a sum sufficient to provide the whole 
of the revenue without any taxation whatever. England can 
therefore at any moment virtually abolish taxation by the 
simple expedient of distributing the Sabbath all over the week. 
We may here mention an incidental advantage of this reform. 
It would reconcile the possibilities of our modern civilisation 
with the absoluteness and rigidity of the old institution. At 
present it is matter of common observation that Sunday is a 
holiday rather in name than in fact to large sections of the 
community. Postmen, railway officials, policemen, hotel 
servants and domestics generally, with many more, can hardly 
boast of fulfilling the letter of the law. But under the 
proposed system all members of all classes would be enabled 
to enjoy a complete holiday once a week, without in the least 
inconveniencing the remainder of the population. We should 
be able to send and receive our letters as usual in the 
metropolis without misgivings as to the postman's sufferings. 
We should not be left in ignorance of accidents and the dying 
wishes of distant friends, for want of telegraph accommodation 
on the Sunday ; nor would the trite argument continue to 
apply against opening museums and galleries on the Sunday, 
based on sympathy with overworked ofi&cials. To sum up, the 
new arrangement would perfect our holidays and render them 



VI THE LABOUR QUESTION 185 

of universal application ; would raise the price of labour 
throughout the country, and would pay the whole sum now 
annually levied by taxation. 

But if the people cannot be trusted to take sufficient rest 
for health how can they be trusted to insure themselves against 
misfortune ? Hence an Employers' Liability Act must be 
passed, and a Bill brought in to make life assurance com- 
pulsory. The agitation for the latter object is fortunately as 
yet unsuccessful, but the former became law some few years 
ago. The principle of it is simple enough. Wages cannot be 
forced up by legislation however cunningly conceived : that is 
now generally admitted. In case of accident to a workman 
under the old system the loss came out of savings from past 
wages or a draft on future wages. The average wage neces- 
sarily covered the loss from accidents, and prudent workmen 
contributed towards an accident insurance fund. By the Act 
the burden of providing against accidents (of certain kinds) is 
now cast on the employer. The insurance fund is no longer 
needed. In other words, the employer 'kee'ps hack (as by law 
compelled) that small portion of the wage which went to cover 
the average risk of accident. This he virtually puts into an 
accident insurance fund, from which from time to time he pays 
out what he is called upon to pay by law. The consequence 
is that the improvident man is obliged to insure. The annual 
premium is extorted from him by force. Of course, this is a 
good thing, if we take it for granted that human nature is 
organically improvident, and that not even by the experience 
of generations is providence to be hoped for. Unless we 
assume this, the effect of the Act must be to counteract the 
teachings of nature by disturbing the sequence of cause and 
effect. But not only are the provident and the improvident 
thrust together into one boat ; the same thing is done for the 
careless and the cautious. The ungainly lout, who stumbles 
over any unusual object in his way, is as well provided for, at 
as little cost to himself, as the careful man who keeps his eyes 
open. Under the individualist system of old the latter could 
put away a smaller sum per annum than the former to form a 
fund to meet possible accidents. His own habit of caution 
lessened the risk. This habit was good for himself, good for 



i86 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

his employer, and good for the community. The Act tends, 
of course, to weaken the habit. A workman nowadays almost 
feels that he has a riglit to an accident. Why should a set of 
careless fellows draw pounds and pounds for doing nothing 
while he, just because he examines ropes and rungs before 
trusting them, has his wages reduced to cover his employer's 
loss ? 

The best excuse for the ignorant promoters of this Act is 
that they really did not know that it must have the effect of 
lowering wages by exactly the amount required to cover the 
employer's liability. 

A large number of workmen have already discovered what 
their legislating benefactors fail to see, and the consequence is 
that they have contracted with their employers " out of the 
Act." To meet this difficulty the neo-radicals now propose to 
render such contract void. The workman is to be permitted 
to accept a contribution from his employer towards the accident 
fund in consideration of foregoing any claim which at any 
future time may arise under the Act, and then, when the claim 
has arisen, to snap his fingers at the other party to the bargain 
and demand full compensation. In other words, he is to be 
allowed to receive compensation twice over for the same injury, 
once by contract and once by fraud. 

It is unnecessary to go into the demoralising effects of 
this so-called Employers' Liability Act Amendment Bill. All 
Bills which contain the dishonourable clause enabling a man 
to enter into a binding engagement to-day and to break it with 
impunity and advantage to-morrow — a clause which is but too 
frequently met with in these days — are the unmistakable 
offspring of neo-radicalism. 

Individualists know full well that the cost of labour under 
the wage system includes the risk of the work to be performed. 
Wages necessarily vary with the risk. Adam Smith pointed 
that out over a hundred years ago. Consequently they have 
never condemned the original Act of 1881 on the ground that 
it taxed the employer. They know that it merely compels 
him to undertake the functions of an accident insurance 
company. The law compels him to compel his workpeople to 
insure against accidents. 



VI THE LABOUR QUESTION 187 

The Act is condemned because it puts on an equal footing 
the provident and the improvident, the careful and the careless, 
and because it removes the incentives to constant watchfulness 
and prudence which tend, if let alone, to become hardened into 
congenital habits. The Amendment Bill, on the other hand, 
they condemn as a contemptible and immoral proposal. 

In addition to compulsory rest and compulsory insurance, 
the neo -radical hastens to confer compulsory security upon the 
workers of the country. We have seen the effect of his efforts 
in the first two directions : how far has he been successful in 
the third ? Ships are to be absolutely sea-worthy ; mines are 
to be ventilated, and explosions rendered impossible ; machinery 
in factories is to be fenced round ; workshops are to be kept 
in perfect sanitary condition ; railway trains are to adopt the 
block system and the automatic continuous brake ; and level 
crossings are to be abolished. The men in the whitelead 
works are to wear suitable clothing, and to drink suitable 
squashes ; bakers are no longer to carry on their calling in a 
basement ; dogs are all to be put into muzzles ; acrobats are 
not to perform on the trapeze without proper neo-radical 
precautions ; and, doubtless, in a few years, hunting, cricket, 
and football will be forbidden as too dangerous to life and limb. 

Meantime, what is the result of all this striving after 
security? The Mines' Eegulation Act was passed in 1872. 
It is alleged, on the high authority of its friends and admirers, 
that it has been the means of saving a few dozen lives a year, 
which is more than doubtful. Well, that is important : lives 
are valuable, and cannot be evaluated in terms of £ s. d. But 
look on the debit side of the account. For the five years 
following that in which the Act came into operation, over 
12,000 workers were on an average each year thrown out of 
employment in the branch of industry affected, so that at 
the end of five years over 62,000 persons had been thrown 
out of work — cast on to an overstocked labour market, to 
compete in other departments of trade at a disadvantage, and, 
if the whole truth could be told, to perish of slow starvation. 
Sixty persons saved from a miner's grave — 60,000 starved to 
death by the Act ! ^ 

1 The. Act came into force in 1873. In 1874 there were employed in and 



1 88 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

And the same disproportion between the direct good and 
the indirect evil wrought by neo-radical legislation of this 
character holds throughout. The little benefit conferred is a 
prominent and noticeable little benefit, while the immense 
mischief done is remote and not always easily traceable to its 
true cause. It may be doubted whether anything has tended 
to undermine England's industrial superiority so much as the 
Factory Legislation of the last fifty years. Perhaps it is 
malicious to unearth the forgotten motives which brought 
them into existence. But that they were the progeny of the 
mean revengefulness of the landed classes for the liberal 
reforms of the day is proved beyond doubt by Eoebuck, who 
pointed out that the division list on Feilden's Act of 1847 
coincided almost exactly with the division list on the Eepeal 
of the Corn-Laws in 1846. JN'early every member of Parlia- 
ment who voted for State interference with factories voted also 
against the cheap loaf. This opinion is confirmed by a letter 
from Mr. Bright himself, which appeared in the Times much 
more recently. "A large section of Tories," says he, "voted 
for the Factory Bill to revenge themselves upon the manufac- 
turers, who were opposing the Corn-Laws." This is significant. 
It entirely precludes the theory of the philanthropic origin of 
these measures, and helps to explain the anomaly of a Tory 
saint bringing in a popular measure, to be resisted tooth and 
nail by the best friend of the people. The effects of the Acts 
have fully justified Mr. Bright's opposition. Mr. Bright, in 
opposing Feilden's Ten Hours' Bill, predicted that "it must 
promote that depression which has for many years prevailed 
in the great interests of the country ; and was calculated to 
destroy the manufacturing supremacy of the country. . . . 
That instead of conferring a benefit on the working classes, as 

about tlie coal mines, 538,829 persons. Five years later, in 1879, the mining 
population had decreased to 476,810, showing a loss of no less than 62,019 
persons. Where did they go ? The other markets were all overstocked. These 
poor people understood mining operations, but probably were but ill-fitted to 
compete in other branches of industry. Let us not blink matters. They were 
slowly but surely murdered by Act of Parliament — starved to death ! Meantime 
the decrease in fatal accidents in the mines during the same period is fixed by 
the same authority at 83. These figures are taken from the Report of the Royal 
Commission on Accidents in Mines. 1881. 



VI THE LABOUR QUESTION 189 

they supposed, it would cause a greater evil to them than 
perhaps any measure which that House had ever passed." ^ 
He described the Bill as " a delusion practised on the working 
classes," and as "one of the worst measures ever passed." 
Some half-dozen years before the passing of the first Factory 
Act,^ trade unionism was showing such strength that it had 
been deemed necessary by the anti-popular party to pass a 
very rigorous measure directed against it.^ " If you want any 
change," this Act virtually said to the proletariat, " apply to 
us, the aristocracy and your friends, and we will bring pressure 
to bear on your masters ; but do not dare to put forward 
demands in your own name, or we will join your masters in 
crushing you." 

And just as democracies, torn asunder by faction, will some- 
times entrust their liberties to the guardianship of a military 
dictator ; just as the down- trodden peasants of Eussia pray for 
protection against the greed of the landowner to the holy 
Czar ; so in a weak moment the workpeople of England dele- 
gated their own growing power to the non-progressive party, 
to be used ostensibly against the employers of labour, but really 
against the free-traders. The originator of this hypocritical 
and dishonest piece of statecraft has been apotheosised by the 
people ; and the laying of the first stone of the fabric of State 
socialism in this country is nowadays commemorated by both 
parties as an epoch in the history of civilisation.* 

The consequences of the surrender of the workers of their 
right of initiation into the hands of their self-appointed patrons 
were manifold. Instead of relying on combination and on 
direct compromise with their employers — a system which was 
already beginning to bear fruits, as the Act of 1826 shows — 
they have ever since turned their eyes toward the supposed 
fountain of favours — Parliament. The very trade unionists 
themselves at their annual congresses deliberate on, not what 
they shall do for themselves, but what Parliament shall be 

^ Hansard, vol. Ixxxix., p. 486, 

'^ Lord Ashley's Act, passed in 1833. 

'^ 6 Geo. IV., c. 129. 

** The new street which has been named after the father of the Factory Acts 
is fairly emblematic of the tortuous gait of party spite in the guise of philanthropy. 
Why cannot our streets and statesmen be straight ? 



190 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

asked to do for them. If the sight of a glass of beer is too 
tempting to be resisted by those who receive their wages in 
a public-house, instead of advising their followers to band them- 
selves together and refuse to accept their wages in such places, 
as the east -coast fishermen did, these leaders of labour go 
down on their knees to the legislature for a " Payment of Wages 
in Public-houses Prohibition Bill." 

But the poor helpless creatures who cannot toddle on with- 
out clinging to the petticoats of the great national nurse 
must not expect to be trusted even to look after their own 
private affairs. Like babies they must be protected against 
themselves. If they do not go to Church on Sunday there is 
an old Act on the Statute-book which subjects them to a fine 
of five shillings — an Act which many are thirsting to put in 
force. And they must not go to museums or picture galleries 
on Sunday. Mr. Broadhurst tells the goody-goodies who gave 
him his under-secretaryship that they do not desire it. Well, if 
not, they need not go ; but both those who do (Mr. Broadhurst 
will admit that there are three or four) and those who do not 
might be allowed to express their views by the simple process 
of going or staying away, without calling upon Mr. Broadhurst 
for an opinion, or upon the saints who have the legislature in 
leading-strings. Again, the shiftless wage receiver may not 
have a glass of beer before such an hour, or after such an hour, 
or on such a day, without a certificate in the form of a railway 
ticket, or a lie on his tongue. The particular hour fixed varies 
with the ebb and flow of saintly influence in the House of 
Commons. Then the "people" must not assemble in the 
streets to talk politics obnoxious to their rulers. They may 
cant and sing, but if they talk politics they are " obstructing 
the thoroughfare " and must go to prison for two months. 
Places of amusement may be opened on all days except the poor 
man's weekly holiday. The "classes" may drink and play 
billiards all night long in Pall Mall, but the " masses " must go 
to bed at regulation hour, or drink water and play " solitaire " 
at home. Such is the final consummation of neo-radicalism ; 
the people dubbed " the masses " and treated as masses — all, 
without regard to their individuality, run in one mould, and 
branded with one brand. 



VI THE LABOUR QUESTION 191 

The net result of the patchings and tinkerings, the 
meddlings and muddlings of this well-meaning set of incapables 
is jnst what might have been expected of it. By nibbling at 
the liberties first of one class and then of another ; by violat- 
ing all those rules of government the soundness of which have 
been demonstrated by the experience of ages ; by increasing 
and entangling all the duties of Parliament and the Executive ; 
by loading the Statute-book with long, tedious, and stupid 
Acts of Parliament, too prolix and heterogeneous for even 
trained lawyers to digest ; by multiplying policemen and 
inspectors and examiners and State-officials of one sort and 
another, till no man can take a pinch of snuff without being 
asked to show his license, or chop faggots without a Govern- 
ment certificate ; by this, that, and the other readjustment of 
the order of nature by rule of thumb, a state of things has 
been brought about in which the workers of England, without 
being made one whit the healthier or the happier, have 
been reduced to the last degree of inefficiency, poverty, and 
dependence. 

Eortunately the beliefs of these semi-socialists sit lightly 
on them. If their first scheme is a failure it is thrown over- 
board without remorse ; a clean sweep is made and a fresh 
start. They are amenable to reason if it is brought home to 
them through the channel of personal experience ; and con- 
sequently it may be predicted that when the country has been 
brought to the brink of ruin, and when they themselves have 
tasted the bitter fruit of their own fooling, they will wheel 
round and set briskly to work to undo it. Even now there are 
signs of this reaction. 

But while the neo-radical would be a comparatively harm- 
less creature but for his unparalleled opportunities for mischief, 
and while, like the bull in the china shop, he is not in himself a 
dangerous or vicious animal, there is a certain sect of genuine 
and consistent socialists who regard the attainment of their 
Utopia as possible only on constitutional lines, and who see 
in neo-radicalism the thin end of their own peculiar wedge 
being steadily driven home by the huge force of national thick- 
headedness. And these theorists find themselves aided not only 
by the milk-and-water socialists of the neo-radical school, but 



192 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

even more effectually by a third and more reprehensible set of 
politicians, dishonest, self-seeking demagogues, who without either 
faith in the methods, or interest in the ultimate effects of the 
doctrine they preach, trade on the credulity of their fellow- 
countrymen, for their own mean personal aggrandisement, 
posing as philanthropists and friends of the people for the sake 
of popularity and its rewards — place and pelf Such are the 
men who aspire to lead the credulous and ignorant in order 
that they may some day barter their delegated power and betray 
their followers to the enemy for an under-secretaryship or a 
snug berth as county-court judge. There is no need to name 
names. Those who have been found out are well known, and 
if I were to name some of those who have not yet been found 
out, their poor trusty supporters would disbelieve and denounce 
me — yet a little while. Meanwhile neo-radicalism is triumph- 
ant, trade lis stagnant, and the workers work and work and 
die, and their children take their places, without hope or 
opportunity of betterment. 

But there is a bright side to even neo-radicalism. It is by 
no means an unmixed evil. It serves as the safety-valve for 
the forces of ignorant rebellion, which would otherwise be pent 
up and attain a dangerous and explosive degree of intensity. 
It owes its existence partly, as I have said, to the common 
sense as distinguished from the severe logicality of Englishmen. 
In France if there is such a safety-valve it is always out of 
order ; it will not act. It jammed in 1789 ; it jammed in 1848 ; 
and it jammed in 1870. It is never to be depended on. In 
England revolutionary forces were stronger in the days of the 
Chartist movement than they have ever been in France. The 
love of justice and liberty has always been stronger on this side 
of the channel. But the great Kadical leaders of the day got 
control of the boiler and let off the steam in dribblets. Eebellion 
fizzled out in neo-radical legislation which, beyond lowering 
the pressure of the forces of discontent, did no good to any one. 
(Yet, surely, this in itself was a great good !) Socialists who 
look with favour on neo-radicalism mistake the blowing off of 
steam for the effective exercise of motive power. While the 
socialists are getting up steam they forget to sit on the safety- 
valve. It is true some of the wiser heads among them are 



VI THE LABOUR QUESTION 193 

beginning to look askance at neo-radicalism. Individualists 
do the same, but for another reason : they believe that the " sub- 
terranean forces " of society might be turned to better account 
than making discordant noises. Both parties are agreed in 
lamenting the waste of power ; but while socialists would burst 
the boiler, individualists would get the engine in motion along 
the lines of civilisation. Semi-socialists are content to pile on 
fuel with one hand " to a certain limited extent, don't you know," 
and to let off steam with the other, also " to a certain limited 
extent." However, perhaps we may trust these trimmers to 
thwart the aims and disappoint the expectations of their more 
consistent brethren. 

"Just as the French workers have already nearly captured the 
municipal management of Paris, so it is our duty to leave no stone 
unturned in order to obtain control of either the reformed or unreformed 
municipal bodies of London. We see how much we could do to 
help on the socialist cause if we had only a determined and persistent 
minority, as the French sociahsts have, upon the municipal council." 

So writes the editor of the organ of social democracy in 
London, and he ventures to predict the outcome of his policy 
in these words : — 

"When next the people marshal themselves in battle array against 
their oppressors, London will help Paris and Paris London to begin 
and carry on in earnest the world-wide international revolution. The 
memories of the great Civil War and the Chartist movement on this 
side of the Channel will be blended with those of '89 and the Commune 
on the other as the two greatest cities of the civilised world combine 
their forces in one final effort." ^ 

Never ! Long before that, the neo- radicals of the day 
will blow off steam enough to reduce the pressure far below 
bursting point. Even neo-radicals, to use a teleological meta- 
phor, were not created without a purpose. 

Under the head of neo-radicalism must on no account 
be included the radicalism of the old Manchester school, 
which was merely advanced Liberalism. Indeed the old and 
the new Eadical are more widely separated by principle than 
the Conservative and Liberal. They stand at opposite poles. 
The old Eadical was all for freedom and was opposed to State 

^ Justice^ September 4, 1886. 




194 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

interference ; the new Kadical is for despotism and Govern- 
ment control in everything. Just as in Protestant countries 
the Eoman Catholics preach religious liberty and equality, 
while in Catholic countries they practise religious intolerance, 
so those renegades who have passed over into the new camp 
never loved liberty for its own sake, but merely because they 
were themselves in a minority : and now that the reins are in 
their own hands they are as ready as the most selfish tyrant 
to impose their own despotic yoke on their fellow-countrymen. 
Let-he was an excellent ladder on which to mount to power, 
but now they have got there, they are the first to kick it 
down. N'ot a single word of what I have written about the 
new school (if an academy of ignorance can fairly be called a 
school) is intended to apply to those champions of freedom 
who fought for civil equality and for civil liberty, who abolished 
religious disqualifications and gave us free trade. 

Unfortunately the race is wellnigh extinct. Mr. Bright 
is gone and his coadjutors of the Anti-Corn Law League 
have most of them passed away, and with them the spirit 
which inspired them. The League itself, it is true, has 
been resuscitated under a new title and with a wider 
aim, but the names of the Liberal leaders of to-day do 
not appear on the roll of its members. Among modern 
Eadicals one solitary figure stands out as an advocate of 
true freedom. To his honour be it said, Mr. Bradlaugh has 
never stooped to promise prosperity to the incompetent and 
luxury to the lazy. So strong is the temptation in these 
democratic days to offer political bribes to the voter, that one 
has need of great popularity, of considerable self-restraint, and 
of singular political honesty to steer clear of class privilege on 
the one hand and majority despotism on the other. " To my 
mind," ^ said the member for IsTorthampton to his constituents, 
" to my mind the great danger, especially to the democracies 
of Europe — I hope not to the democracy of America — is to look 
to the State to do things for you. The State is only you. It is 
often less than you, and it can never be more than you. . . . 
Democracies should leave as little as possible for the State to do. 
Every citizen should prevent, as much as possible, any control 
^ The Northamptonshire Guardian^ September 4, 1886. 



VI THE LABOUR QUESTION 195 

over individual energy." How many Liberal members dare 
say ditto to that in presence of their own constituents ? 

It is a relief to turn to a third remedy for the 
present unjust system of distribution. What is called the 
system of "profit-sharing" is advocated by men who are 
actuated by a sense of justice and sympathy, and whose 
suggestions are based on experiment and observation. The 
advocates of "profit-sharing" accept the principle which I 
have described as floating in the air — that somehow wages 
should vary with profits, that when the employer is making 
large gains, his workpeople ought to enjoy a corresponding 
prosperity. But the method they propose is this : the employer 
should be persuaded to put by a certain percentage of his trade 
profits for division by way of bonus among his employees in 
proportion to their ordinary wages. In this way the workers 
will be in a position to save if they are thrifty, and so in good 
time to become themselves capitalists. But why should he, 
the employer asks, rob himself of his proper profits in order to 
enrich his workmen ? Might he not as well give a tithe of his 
income to the poor-box ? To which the " profit-sharers" answer, 
" No : it is true that the workers have no claim upon you, 
either moral or economic, for a share ; but you will find that 
if you give them such bonus as we suggest they will work 
harder and make the total net profits so much larger that 
you will not lose but rather gain by the process. They will 
perceive that the harder and better they work the more they 
will get, and so while they toil for their own good they will 
necessarily at the same time toil for yours." As to what 
percentage should be divided among the " hands," profit-sharers 
differ in opinion. Nearly all agree that the share should be 
small : and it is clear that according to the principles of the 
system only the net profits, after payment of wages and 
interest, can be devoted to the purpose. 

There is no doubt that a great deal can be said for profit- 
sharing. It has a decided tendency to allay the spirit of 
hostile rivalry between employers and employed. It seems to 
exercise a salutary influence in preventing strikes and trade 
disputes. It certainly stimulates the workers to greater and 
better work. The hands are more careful to guard against 



196 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

mistakes, and that the interest taken in the business by the 
hands is much increased is shown, says M. Godin, the founder 
of the " Tamilistere," by the constant new inventions and 
improvements made by the men. " Since they were made 
partners " (not true partners ?), says he, " a great number of 
patents have been taken out by the Familistere." 

Again, as Mr. Egerton ^ tells us, " those working for a share 
of the profits rarely ask for a Monday holiday, as do most other 
(French) workmen. Thus their houses are able to execute 
orders with greater rapidity. When there was a strike amongst 
the painters, the workmen at M. Leclaire's worked fourteen 
and even more hours per day without the slightest complaint." 

Again, writing of these same men, he says : " The idea of 
equality of pay would be looked upon by them (Leclaire's 
men) as ridiculous." 

M. Laroche Joubert, who founded the profit-sharing paper 
mills in Angouleme, is so enthusiastic with regard to the system 
that he brought a Bill into the Chamber to make it compulsory 
upon all who tendered for public works. According to his own 
account, his house has made profits even in the worst of times. 
M. Joubert contends that his business is not liable to strikes, 
and that there is great zeal displayed by the hands, who rarely 
leave, the house. But the practical commercial success of such 
profit-sharing houses as those of Leclaire, of M. Godin, and 
of M. Joubert no more justify us in eulogising the system as 
such, than do the failures of Herr Borchert justify us in con- 
demning it. All alike were based on. an arrangement arbitrary, 
paternal, and in all respects characteristically continental. 

Let us see what there is to be urged against it. In the 
first place it is demoralising to the workpeople. They 
become the recipients of the employer's generosity. " The 
graduated divisions of profits are conferred as favours, not as 
rights." In the second place it begs the question as to the 
true and rightful ownership of the profits of industry : and in 
the third place so long as the percentage to be divided remains 
arbitrary and is left to the discretion of the master, the inevit- 
able result of competition (under the law of population) will 
be to bring wages and bonus together down to the subsistence 
^ Government Report on Co-operation in Foreign Countries. 



VI THE LABOUR QUESTION 197 

level. As Herr Borchert, who has had fifteen years' practical 
experience of it, says, " it cannot but retain the character of 
an exceptional measure, being at best a mere experiment 
among a number of others that crop up and disappear with 
every fresh turn of the social problem." If the bonus increases 
in any one trade the wages will correspondingly diminish. \ 
speak of the time when the system shall have been adopted 
not only by kind-hearted and large-minded men, like those 
who have already tried it, but by the general run of cheese- 
paring capitalists. When competition is keen — when trade is 
bad — when profits are small — when a hungry population is 
clamouring for work and bread — then the strain will come. 
Those who try to give more than the old wage in any form 
will have to close their works or forego the normal reward of 
risk. The more selfish (or, say, prudent) among them will 
prefer to invest their money on absolute security rather than 
at great risk for an equal return. Why spin cotton for 3 per 
cent with a prospect of less or even of loss when the like 
amount can be obtained from consols without any anxiety 
whatever ? Again, when the workman's share of the bonus is 
small compared with his wage the stimulus to increased exer- 
tion is not so great as might be supposed, and it is doubtful 
whether 5 or 1 per cent of the net profits all along the line, 
even if wages remained the same, would have any appreciable 
effect on production ; and if it had not, the system could not 
be permanent or even of long duration. Lastly, the ownership 
by the labourers of no matter how small a share in the 
employer's fixed capital (and that is how most profit-sharers 
insist on the workman's share being invested) forms a bond 
between the two which places the small and compulsory share- 
holder in a position of dependence on the large and free share- 
holder.-^ The resulting system, as was clearly shown in the 
Maison Ledaire, is one of a patriarchal character. The em- 
ployer becomes a little monarch, a bureaucracy develops itself, 
laws are made affecting the workers such as no free man 
should submit to, and the rights of the several parties become 
increasingly difficult of demarcation. When disputes arise 
it is found that the rules have been drafted in the interest 

^ E.g. it is compulsory in tlie Familistere. 



198 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

rather of the lion than of the fox and the ass, and in case of 
litigation the latter go to the wall. In fact these establish- 
ments are despotic little industrial communes, and as such are 
quite unfitted for acclimatisation in the hardy soil of British 
freedom.^ 

Between the theory of profit-sharing and the theory of co- 
operation there is this fundamental difference : the former 
regards the whole of the profits of industry as morally and 
economically the property of the capitalist ; the latter regards 
the whole of the profits (as such) as morally the property of 
the manual workers. Consequently it is not surprising that 
all profit-sharing businesses have been founded by employers, 
mostly with philanthropic intentions, while co-operative factories 
have been mostly started by the men themselves without any 
aid ah extra. Again, the men in profit-sharing houses are 
usually of a pronounced conservative type, while " co-operators" 
are notorious for ti\eir aggressive radicalism. (I do not use 
these terms in the party sense.) Thus Lord Vivian, writing 
from Belgium, says: "The Vooruit and all the Ghent societies 
have been established "by the Working classes alone, all attempts 
to found such associations on the invitation or with the assist- 
ance of the employers having failed. This is probably due in 
great part to the action of the Belgian socialists, who maintain 
that the working classes can only rely on themselves to obtain 
their rights and improve their condition, and that these societies 
must therefore consist exclusively of working men. The last 
socialist program lays down that ' the enfranchisement of 
labour should be the work of the working classes themselves ; 
since the other classes of society cannot seriously help on this 
object, the working men's party should always work separately.'"^ 

In treating of co-operation we must not fail to distinguish 
between co-operative distribution and co-operative production. 
Beyond the fact that they are known by the name of co- 
operation these two systems have little or nothing in common. 
The principles on which they are based differ, the objects with 
which they originated differ, and they are justified (if at all) on 

^ Those who wish to see the results of profit-sharing in actual working order 
should read Mr. Sedley Taylor's writings on the subject. 
- Report on Co-operation in Foreign Countries — Belgium. 



VI THE LABOUR QUESTION 199 

quite different grounds. And yet such is the confusion 
produced by mere names that those persons who approve of 
the one almost always express approval of the other. 

" How is it," it is asked, " that, while co-operative distribu- 
tion has made such amazing strides, co-operative production is 
nearly stationary ?" But for this accidental confusion it would 
have been unnecessary to have referred to co-operative distribu- 
tion in this place at all. As it is, however, it may be as well 
to say a word or two on the subject of co-operation, as vulgarly 
understood, before proceeding to consider co-operation in its 
more accurate sense. 

Co-operative distribution is based on the principle of rolling 
into one, consumer and worker, demander and supplier — a prin- 
ciple which traverses the law of the division of labour. A 
deal of cackling has been done over some of the earlier co- 
operative societies, and doubtless the stores of to-day in Eng- 
land are a remarkable and an interesting study. Monster 
mushroom growths of sudden and luxuriant expansion, their 
existence goes to show that there is a screw loose somewhere, 
and that the present system of retail trade is out of equili- 
brium with society. And that this is so might have been seen 
beforehand. The enormous advances made in the art of trans- 
port during the last generation have defeated all the calculations 
of the retail traders. One can telegraph to Constantinople for 
a few pounds of Turkish tobacco, and get it for hardly more 
than the cost of an equal amount at the nearest tobacconist's, 
and with a better chance of obtaining the precise article 
required. It is no uncommon thing for people in the provinces 
to obtain the whole of their groceries from JLondon instead of 
from the retail grocer hard by. The very existence of small 
retailers is threatened. The value of the service they render 
is not equal to their cost of living and the rent of their busi- 
ness premises. Clearly, retailing on a gigantic scale tends, like 
large farming on corn-growing and pasture lands, to elbow out 
the small people. There is an enormous saving in cost of 
staff, and a still greater in carriage, and there is a smaller pro- 
portion of surplus stock. Small traders finding themselves 
thus hard pressed by a rival organisation, which began with 
the wage-receiving classes and rapidly extended upwards to the 



200 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

" upmost " classes, had recourse to various expedients for keeping 
and gaining custom, of which one was the obvious one of giving 
long credits. And they developed the carrying branch of 
their business very considerably. But when orders were called 
for, goods left at the required hour, and a year's credit given, 
it was not to be expected that apparent prices could remain 
the same. The price of the article must cover the interest on 
the accounts and also the resulting bad debts, and the services 
of the extra hands required ; and the difference between 
retailers' prices and store prices would become daily accentuated. 
Of course if the consumer imagines that by foregoing the 
interest on his domestic expenditure, and by putting his 
shoulder to the wheel and carrying his own parcels, he is really 
getting his things cheaper, it is a happy delusion which does no 
one much harm, but it is not a delusion on which stores can 
thrive for ever. The old lady who bought a herring for a 
farthing and engaged a cab to carry it home, would probably 
discover the flaw in her household economy after a dozen or so 
of experiments. For a time, no doubt, aggregations of men, 
working on new and improved principles, may beat the repre- 
sentatives of the ancien regime out of the field, but mean- 
time they must act through some form of organisation, and the 
men who do the organising part of the business are mortal — a 
fact which co-operationists (Hke socialists) appear to forget. 
Other things equal, the private trader must have a considerable 
advantage over a company of associated traders, still more over 
a motley crew of ignorant persons whose affairs are in the 
hands of paid officials. 

The abolition of long credits by retail traders, and the im- 
provements taking place in the independent systems of small 
parcels delivery,^ together with the more general recognition of 
the doctrine of " small profits and quick returns," will soon more 
than equalise the conditions. Eetail traders will many of them 
be killed out, but others who carry on business in the large 
way required by modern social arrangements will sooner or 
later outstrip the co-operative societies, beat them on their 
own ground, and compel them to wind up their affairs. Even 
now it is only necessary to compare the prices and quahty of 
1 An improvement too likely to be retarded by recent Government competition. 



THE LABOUR QUESTION 



goods supplied by the Civil Service or Army and ISTavy Stores 
with similar goods supplied by Whiteley, or other large retail 
provider, to discover that the system of co-operative distribu- 
tion, having drawn attention to a real defect in retail trade 
organisation, is wellnigh played out. Five or ten years hence 
no such amateur bazaars as those now flourishing in Victoria 
Street and the Haymarket will remain to excite the envy and 
hatred of the retailer. They will die a natural death. 

But since the object was originally to dispense with the 
costly services of the " middleman " or " retailer," the movement 
was clearly justified by success. Beginning with workmen, the 
contagion rapidly spread to the ranks of the capitalists and all 
classes of society, and from one country to another, and it still 
continues to vindicate its existence. In one sense, no doubt, 
co-operation as here understood can be extended to production, 
as indeed it was by the Eochdale pioneers, who ground their 
own flour and made their own bread. The same thing was 
done by several of the French co-operative bakeries, and so 
long as the co-operators made only for their own consumption, 
so as to evade the miller's profits, the principle was the same 
as that on which co-operative distribution rests. But the 
justification was wanting. While the small and numerous 
local retailers were and are a useless anachronism, the manu- 
facturer is nothing of the kind. I am not aware that any 
association has supplied its own members exclusively with 
boots, or pianos, or chairs, so that the appearance of co-opera- 
tive societies of piano-makers and the like brings us face to 
face with the other form of co-operation, in which members are 
not regarded as demanders. 

Co-operative production, in this sense, is a very different 
matter. It has a separate origin, a separate object, and a 
separate justification. It is based on the observed fact that 
the contributor of capital (so-caUed) walks off, not only with 
the profits of capital but also with the profits of labour. This 
is so, and some of the more clear-sighted among the working 
classes see that it is so. Furthermore, they cannot see why 
the capitalist should take any profit at all. His contribution, 
they say, being dead matter, cannot add to the value of the 
new product ; whatever is so added is the result of labour, and 



202 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

of labour alone. So they argue. Thus if the workers could 
only scrape together enough wealth to make a start, the profits 
could be divided in proportion to the labour contributed ; or if 
capital must for some invisible reason have a reward, then it 
should take the form of interest on value lent. It is un- 
necessary to point out that this reasoning involves the socialist 
fallacy that dead capital cannot yield a profit. In fine, the 
systems of co-operative production which have been started in 
this country are all based on an avowed recognition of this mis- 
taken doctrine, the effect of which is simply to put the boot on 
the other leg. Under the present system of wagedom the 
capitalist takes the whole of the profits and the contributor 
of labour none. Under the proposed system of co-operation 
the labourer takes the whole of the profits and the contributor 
of dead capital none. One arrangement is as unfair and as 
inexpedient as the other. Each should properly take profits 
in proportion to the value of his original contribution. The 
borrowing of capital at a fixed interest is open to many of 
the objections which can be urged against paying the workman 
a fixed wage. 

Like profit-sharing, like socialism, like trade unionism, co- 
operative production is based on a good deal that is true but 
considerably adulterated with fiction and fallacy. Frequently 
the good outweighs the evil. Consider the effect of co-operative 
production in the following cases -} — 

Fourteen Paris piano-makers in 1848, without any means 
of their own, or Government aid, after great hardships and 
difficulties in starting, founded and carried on successfully a 
business which two years afterwards owned 40,000 francs' 
worth of property. 

A co-operative association of fifteen furniture -turners 
started with 313 francs as their entire capital. After hav- 
ing at first to content themselves with wages — 87-|- cents per 
day — they made their enterprise a complete success. 

A small association of arm-chair makers, which started in 
1849 with 135 francs, made 37,000 francs of net profits, and 

1 Reports by Her Majesty's Representatives abroad on the system of Co-opera- 
tion in Foreign Countries. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by command 
of Her Majesty, June 1886. 



VI THE LABOUR QUESTION 203 

could afford to pay rent of 5500 francs per annum for their 
workshop. 

An association of curriers started with only four working 
members : in two years, 8 6 members were at work. 

A co-operation of filemakers, starting with fourteen 
members and 500 francs, acquired a capital of 150,000 francs 
and two houses of business — one in Paris, the other in the 
provinces. 

A successful co-operation of boot-form makers began with 
two francs. 

One of spectacle-makers, with 650 francs, had in 1883 a 
capital of over 1,270,000 francs. 

Of course the difficulties with which co-operation has to 
deal are those which might be expected from the refusal of the 
workers to work in harmony and partnership with the owners 
of wealth. As Mr. Egerton points out in the French Eeport, 
" it has been found by experience that co-operative associations 
on a large scale are difficult to start. . . . Eeally good men are 
required at first. It is difficult to find the sums necessary 
to begin co-operation on a large scale. . . . Owing to the 
difficulty in finding sufficiently large premises, only a small 
number of members can generally work together at first." 

The admission of the capitalist within the ranks on equal 
terms would solve all these difficulties. Mr. Egerton adds : 
" The very strict obedience to regulations exacted and enforced, 
and their discipline — greater far than could have been main- 
tained by masters — are considered to be in great measure the 
cause of the success of these co-operative societies." 

It is hardly necessary to point out that the spirit of 
self-help manifested in all forms of co-operation is exceedingly 
distasteful to the socialists. In the first workmen's congress 
held in Paris, in 1876, the general opinion was for co-operation, 
though men such as M. Isidore Finance, a house-painter by 
trade, and a prominent speaker at working men's meetings, 
expressed himself strongly against it, not so much on the 
ground of the many failures in 1848, and after the collapse 
of the Credit au travail in 1868, but on account of the 
selfishness of the system, the members of co-operative societies 
becoming, he said, nothing letter than capitalists. 



204 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap, vi 

Co-operative production as thus understood, and based on 
the theory that dead capital is not entitled to profits, has the 
support of no less an authority than J. S. Mill. Looking 
forward into the distant future, he is of opinion that the time 
will come when " owners of capital will gradually find it to 
their advantage, instead of maintaining the struggle of the old 
system with workpeople of only the worst description, to Imd 
their capital to the associations — to do this- at a diminishing 
rate of interest, and at last, perhaps, even to exchange their 
capital for terminable annuities. In this or some such mode 
the existing accumulations of capital might honestly, and 
by a kind of spontaneous process, become in the end the joint 
property of all who participate in their productive employment ; 
a transformation which, thus effected, would be the nearest 
approach to social justice, and the most beneficial ordering of 
industrial affairs for the universal good which it is possible at 
present to foresee." ^ This remarkable passage shows that 
Mill himself did not recognise the moral right of the owner 
of wealth to the fruits of that wealth. Hence his denunciations 
of the " unearned increment " were at least consistent. 

^ Principles of Political Economy, by J. S. Mill. 



CHAPTEE VII 

LABOUE CAPITALISATION 

Finally, let us examine the system which may be called the 
Capitalisation of Labour. 

In order to understand the foundations on which the 
system is based, it may be as well to examine the whole labour 
question from three distinct points of view : from the historical 
standpoint, the juridical standpoint, and the economic stand- 
point. 

We may trace the history of industrialism briefly through 
its successive changes along with the progress of civilisation, 
and then, by discovering the general tendency, predict with 
tolerable certainty the direction which further changes are 
likely to take. In the earliest times of which we have any 
record we find the whole of the working population — that is, 
of those who toil with their hands, the agricultural labourers 
and artisans — in a state of abject slavery. Long before they 
emerged from that state their lot as slaves considerably 
improved, but still they remained slaves. We hear much of 
the liberty and democracy of the Greeks, but we know that 
at the time when Athenians were enjoying a high degree of 
civilisation the great majority of the people of Attica were 
slaves. For every freeman in Athens there must have been 
four or five others who were written off as mere chattels. 
While every citizen of full age had a voice in the affairs of 
the State, these poor toilers had none. So that universal 
suffrage in those days meant what it would mean now if the 
working classes were disfranchised. The slaves were of course 
bought and sold. Aristotle himself defines them as " animated 



2o6 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

machines." The Malthusian restraints were rigidly applied, 
not hy them but to them, because their masters found it 
cheaper to buy than to rear them. They were of two classes, 
the bondsmen in the fields, who more nearly resembled the 
serfs of N"orman England, inasmuch as they could not be 
exported or separated from their families, and the town slaves, 
who were chiefly barbarians, that is, foreigners and captives in 
war ; these more nearly resembled the slaves of the American 
plantations of last generation. They stood on a stone in the 
circle, and were knocked down by auction to the highest bidder 
at sums ranging from half a mina to twenty or thirty minas. 
But these high prices were paid chiefly for courtesans and 
cithara players. This class of slave could not acquire property 
like the serfs. The miners worked in chains, and frequently 
died from the effects of the bad air in the ill- ventilated mines. 
They were sometimes kept in gangs and let out for hire, when 
their owners seem to have realised something like a profit of 
15 per cent. Slaves were not believed on oath, but when 
their evidence was required they were tortured. Still, even 
this was an advance upon the slavery of still earlier times, for 
we find that it was unlawful to hurt a slave without just cause, 
nor could a master kill his own slave without obtaining a legal 
sentence against him. Moreover, slaves had certain privileges 
of sanctuary, and sometimes, though rarely, they were manu- 
mitted, when they were compelled to respect their former 
master as a patron under penalty of being again sold into 
slavery. 

Coming down to later times we find the position of the 
Eoman slave still further ameliorated. One law makes it penal 
for a master to kill his own slave : later still such an act is 
made murder. Again, it was enacted that when slaves were 
sold, the family should not be broken up. Young children 
could no longer be separated from their parents, nor a husband 
from his wife. Manumission was of far more frequent occasion 
than among the Greeks. Erom being mere domestics, mechanics, 
and artisans, they rose to the position of commercial agents, 
and were allowed to acquire property, called peculmm, and 
to enforce their claims in the Courts of Law. We find also 
doctors, literary men, actors, and courtesans fetching high 



VII LABOUR CAPITALISATION 207 

prices. Although Christianity did not condemn the institution 
of slavery, it is said by some to have mitigated the harshness 
of owners ; but the observed change may, with greater prob- 
ability, be referred to the advance in morality accompanying a 
growing civilisation. The incursions of the northern barbarians 
upset the existing relations between masters and slaves, and 
when the clouds are again lifted we find the " Adscripti Glebse " 
in the place of all the heterogeneous classes and sub-classes 
of Eoman slaves. These " Adscripti Glebse " were the " serfs " 
of the Middle Ages. 

Serfdom or villeinage was at first a state in which the serf 
belonged to the lord of the soil like his stock or cattle. They 
were removable from the folk-land at the lord's pleasure. A 
tendency towards something like liberty is seen in the distinction 
between " pure villeinage " and " privileged villeinage." The 
first " was when a villein held land on terms of doing whatso- 
ever was commanded of him, nor knew in the evening what was 
to be done in the morning." His services were undefined. 
Privileged villeins, on the other hand, could not be removed 
from their holdings so long as they performed certain definite 
services. Base and compulsory as these services were, it is 
worthy of remark that these villein-socmen were commonly 
described as " free." How these services came to be coromuted 
one by one into a fixed rent in kind or in money, and finally in 
money only, is a long story.^ 

When the lot of the workman of to-day is unfavourably 
compared (as it frequently is by socialists) with the lot of the 
workers of four or five centuries ago, we must remember that 
the comparison is usually made between two different strata of 
society. The happy yeomen of those days (if they were so 
happy) are the farmers of to-day, not the wage-earning labourers. 
No doubt the small landholders of the period following upon 
the Black Death were in tolerably comfortable circumstances ; 
but when we come to examine the position of those who had no 
strips to plough, the case is very different. But to proceed 
with our short historical survey. Trade, commerce, and town 
life bring many changes. The rise of the great middle class in 

^ See Seebohm's English Village Communities : also Six Centuries of Work and 
Wages, by J. E. Thorold Rogers, M. P. 



2o8 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries ; its conflicts 
with the ancient feudal aristocracy and eventual triumph, con- 
summated (in this country) in the great Eeform Act of 1832 ; 
the gradual development of two new parties, employers and 
employed, or so-called capitalists and manual labourers, are 
grand historical facts which bring us down to the present day. 

The battle is now between employer and employed. Year 
by year the strife waxes hotter. We are now in the midst of it. 
Louder and louder roar the discontented hosts of wage earners. 
Inch by inch the baffled capitalists retire before the onward 
pressure of numbers. Masters quail ; they offer terms ; they 
buy off the enemy for a while ; and then again the billows 
swell and roll forward as before. Whither does all this tend ? 
See, the millions are organising : no longer a mob, they are an 
army. The battle cannot rage for ever with equal fortune. 
And which side shall win ? That is the question which some 
answer with hope, others with despair. It is for us to project 
the converging rays of the past into the future, and with that 
light to predict the outcome. 

The workman is free at last. After centuries of struggles, 
of successes, and of failures, serfdom in this country is dead. 
The last vestige of the system perished within the memory of 
living men, though it was practically extinct long before. The 
sale of a human being in England, even though he himself be 
the vendor, is void. A slave landed for one moment on English 
soil is by law free. Even a long lease of a man (if I may 
use the expression) is discountenanced, and apprentices are 
getting rarer year by year. The question whether a con- 
tract of service intended to last during the servant's lifetime 
was legal, was raised for the last time, I believe, just half a 
century ago.^ 

The binding of even young persons for so long a period as 
seven years is regarded as savouring of serfdom ; and so, with all 
respect to the recommendations of Koyal Commissioners, it is. I 
admit that the change brings evils in its train. Periods of transi- 
tion from one regime to another invariably bristle with dangers 
and difficulties; but let us beware lest, in our efforts to escape from 
them, we magnify the good of the old order which is passing 

1 Wallis V. Bay, 2 M. and W. 1837. 



VII LABOUR CAPITALISATION 209 

away, more than the greater good of the new order which is 
surely coming. " Faith is the evidence of things not seen." 
And it is a rare virtue ! 

And now what have we in the place of that which is 
passed away? Instead of serfdom we have wagedom. The 
present system is one of labour hiring. At the bottom of the 
scale we find agricultural labourers standing out for a real wage, 
fair and square, without patronage or privilege : at the top we 
find the men in the large mills, the factories, the iron-works, 
and the mines, demanding something more than this. They 
are already in the happy position to which the agricultural 
labourers are aspiring, and yet they are discontent. ]N"o wonder. 
They have discovered by experience that they receive no more 
than is necessary to keep them in repair for the employers. 
The evidences of increased prosperity have been worked up and 
blown out by the " exploiting " class ; but the workers know 
perfectly well that the accounts of their growing wealth are not 
only untrue but demonstrably false cb 'priori. A man will not 
listen to an argument showing that he himself feels very well, 
when he surely knows that he feels very ill. N'or will he 
patiently listen to those who tell him he is very happy, when 
he knows he is very wretched. Then what are these workers 
in the advance guard of the industrial army clamouring for ? 
The truth is they cannot answer definitely themselves. They 
hardly know. They speak with inarticulate voice. But we 
can see from one or two indications whither their aspirations 
tend. And upon the indistinct goal of their endeavours we 
must keep our eye, in order that we may be able to predict the 
probable nature of the relations between employers and 
employed in the near or distant future. Why have some of 
them agitated for a sliding scale ? Because they feel that 
they have a right to a share of the profits of the undertaking 
upon which they are engaged. Therefore, they say, we 
will have a sliding scale, because when the price of our pro- 
duct is high we shall receive a higher wage. This shows 
that whatever economic doctrine they may hold in theory, they 
feel in practice that they are after all worth something more 
than the wages they fetch in the open market. Again, the 
arbitrations between masters and men which have become such 



210 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

a prominent institution of late are clearly based on a dim 
recognition of the same doctrine : and yet again, the establish- 
ment of large co-operative societies for the purposes of produc- 
tion or distribution is due to a feeling that the workers have 
a right to a share, if not the whole of the profits of the under- 
taking they contribute to. All these signs show that the 
working classes themselves (and, to a certain extent, their 
employers also) dimly perceive that they have some rights 
(more than those of the horses and oxen who also help to 
create) to the resulting compound. It is hardly remarkable 
that, after being long deprived of any share of the produce, they 
should some of them swing round to the extreme view that 
their share is the whole of it. 

The outcome of our historical survey is not definite 
or precise. It amounts to this : that there is a strong feeling 
among the workers (and others), not perhaps amounting to a 
reasoned conviction, that they have a right to a share of the 
wealth they help to create. Will a juridical analysis of the 
respective rights of the workers and masters furnish the exact 
quantitative relations ? 

I do not propose here to discuss the expediency of the 
institution of private property. I shall assume that it is the 
most economical means of equitable distribution attainable by 
man. Again, from time immemorial it has been admitted 
that the fruits of property (the so-called " unearned increment"), 
such as the apples that come on the owner's apple-tree, or the 
eggs that appear in his poultry-yard, rightly and expediently 
belong to the owner. Whether they ought not to belong to 
everybody, or to the State of which the owner is a member, 
or to the first finder or first taker, or to somebody else, is a 
question which need not be dealt with here. I shall take it 
for granted as an axiom that the fruits of wealth belong to 
the owner of that wealth. In the case of commixture or 
confusion of valuables belonging to different owners, where 
they cannot again be separated (as e.g. when different wines 
are poured into the same cask, or the wheat from two fields is 
stacked all together), the value of the whole so resulting is 
divided between the owners in proportion to the shares 
contributed by them respectively. In some cases one of them 



LABOUR CAPITALISATION 



is regarded as the owner of the whole, and the other or others 
is or are said to have a lien upon it to the value of his or their 
shares. Such is the common-sense view of what is just in 
such cases. When the value of the whole is greater than the 
value of the several elements contributed, then the increment 
of value is also divided in proportion to the shares contributed 
by each ; as, for example, when wheat has been sown by B on 
a field belonging to A (the harvest may be exceptionally good) ; 
A is taken to have contributed the annual rent of the field 
(what he could have let it for in the market for one year), and 
B is taken to have contributed the original value of the seed 
and the value of his own services, ploughing, hoeing, reaping, 
etc., at the price such services would have cost in the market. 
The produce is then divided between A and B in proportion 
to the totals arrived at, or else (as in most civilised countries) 
the whole produce becomes the property of A, with the obliga- 
tion attached of paying B the aforesaid proportion, B having a 
lien on the produce by way of security. 

This certainly seems to be based on justice and convenience, 
and whether it is actually sound or unsound (in spite of 
socialistic arguments) it is the principle upon which all such- 
like questions are as a fact, and for centuries have been, 
solved. In Eoman law if a man bought a mare in foal, the 
foal belonged to the purchaser. It is true that if he bought a 
female slave who was enceinte, without any special stipula,tion, 
the child belonged to the former master and not to the pur- 
chaser; but that was for a particular reason, based on the 
relations between masters and slaves, and which need not be 
gone into here. As a general rule it may be affirmed that to 
whomsoever a thing belongs, to him belong the fruits thereof, 
and where things owned by different owners bear fruits in 
common, such fruits belong to such owners in proportion to the 
shares contributed by them respectively. Such was the law of 
Eome. Such is the law of England. . For example, in the case 
of a riparian landowner, if the river gradually deposits another 
half-acre of land on to his estate (provided it cannot be shown 
to have been lodily detached from the estate of another person) 
it is counted as part of the fruits of his land, and belongs 
to him accordingly, although it has cost him nothing. 



212 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

Let us use these facts to throw light on the problem of 
labour payment. Who is properly the owner of wealth which 
has been made more valuable by the expenditure upon it of 
labour ? A cloth merchant or draper puts a quantity of cloth 
into the hands of a tailor with instructions to convert it into 
clothing. The work is done. To whom should the wearing 
apparel belong when it is finished ? Few except lawyers could 
say at once to whom it actually does belong by law. In one 
sense (the technical and precise sense of the term ownership) 
it belongs to the draper. In another and looser sense, part of 
its value belongs to the draper and another part of its value to 
the tailor. And what is the just ratio of the two parts ? Of 
course if a distinct bargain had been made beforehand, that 
would settle the matter. If the draper had said, " The cloth 
is worth £10 ; when it is ready for the market in the shape 
of clothing you must pay me £10 out of the proceeds of 
the sale," then the draper would have a lien (I am not using 
the word in its usual technical sense) upon it to the value of 
£10. But he might as well have sold the cloth to the tailor 
at once, indeed better, for his payment is deferred without 
interest. Or he might have taken the interest into account 
and said, " You must pay me ten guineas out of the proceeds," 
in calculating which he ought to have formed some estimate of 
the risk he was running ; for, conceivably, the apparel might 
sell for less than the value of the cloth, just as most manuscript 
sermons sell for less than the original value of the unspoilt 
paper before the expenditure of the clerical labour upon it. 
Again, the draper might have said, " Never mind the value of 
the cloth. The value of your services is £18. I will take 
and sell the finished article, and you shall have a lien upon it 
for £18." In this case the tailor would be in a similar position 
to that of the draper under the first arrangement — a very 
foolish position. Alas ! but it is the position of the working 
man of the present day. Suppose the clothes, instead of 
selling for £28 — the cost of the elements — sold for £42, owing 
to a keen demand, who would pocket the 5 per cent profit ? 
Under the last-named arrangement, of course, the draper would, 
and quite right too. Fools are made to be bled. But now 
suppose no previous bargain had been made, what would be 



VII LABOUR CAPITALISATION 213 

the equitable way of distributing the proceeds of the sale 
according to the principle underlying the law of all civilised 
countries ? The case is one of commixture. The increment 
of surplus value is £14, or 50 per cent. The value of the 
whole product is £42. Clearly, the draper would take £15 
and the tailor would take £27, instead of which, at the present 
day, under the system of wagedom, if the tailor is a journey- 
man or wage-earning tailor, he gets £18 and the draper gets 
£24. In other words, the draper or employer pockets £9 
that ought to belong to the tailor. Of course, if workers 
insist on making bad bargains, that is their own look-out. 

The political economists themselves admit and even con- 
tend that unto whomsoever the capital belongs, to him 
belong the profits. But they are pleased to put their own 
definition or definitions on the term "capital," and out of 
the dozen or so of current definitions, though they all bear 
a strong family likeness to a sieve they have this one trait 
in common — they all carefully exclude the right of the 
manual workers to a share of the profits. Their united 
testimony is valuable only as showing the infiuence upon 
ordinary minds of the fundamental juridical principle as to the 
ownership of the fruits of wealth. The question is, Who 
contributes the labour in the ordinary processes of industri- 
alism ? Banish all " orthodox " dogmas about " wage funds " 
and "the three agents of production" and the rest. Clearly, 
if the workers are slaves, the owner contributes the labour, and 
if we grant his right to his slaves we must admit his right to 
the fruits of their labour. He runs all the risk. If there is 
a loss he incurs it. He cannot afford to starve his slaves any 
more than his horses because their labour is unproductive in a 
particular venture. If their labour is continually unremuner- 
ative, if they cost more than they bring in, he must get rid of 
them. He has made a bad purchase, just as though he had 
bought a lame horse. Similarly, if he takes an apprentice for 
seven years who turns out an incorrigible dolt, he is in the 
position of one who has bought a house which he cannot let 
for the interest on the purchase money. He must make the 
best of a bad job. Lastly, if he hires a man by the week, or 
the day, or the hour, to work for him at a pre-arranged wage, 



214 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

he practically supplies the labour himself, he runs all the risk, 
and the temporary slave has no claim whatever on the profits. 

This brings us face to face with the question whether the 
wage bargain is a good one for the worker, for the capitalist, or 
for the community. Historically and juridically the evidence 
seems to be strongly in the direction of a different bargain. 
The tendency seems to be very marked towards a system of 
capitalisation of labour as a substitute for the present system 
of labour-hiring or wagedom. 

Before we can speak positively on this point we must try 
to ascertain what would be the numerous economic effects of 
so great and revolutionary a change. The capitalisation system 
proceeds on the assumption that labourers ^ are themselves a 
form of capital, because their value depends on the demand for 
them as an element in production. It follows that if we knew 
the market value of the labourers (their capital value as 
slaves), and also the market value of the capital contributed 
by the capitalist, we should know in what proportion the 
net profits on the combination ought justly to be divided. 
At present I have grounds for believing that the employer 
pockets more than half the workmen's just share ! To begin 
with, he pockets the whole of the interest on labourers. If we 
estimate this at the very low figure of 2-1- per cent on the 
present depreciated value, it amounts to about £375,000,000 
per annum, which gives an average of about £12 a year, man, 
woman, and child, all over the British Isles. But figures can- 
not well be depended on in the absence of accurate information. 
Perhaps, however, even the most sceptical denouncer of 
civilisation will admit that, take them all round, British work- 
men are worth at least as much as niggers were thirty years 
ago in the Southern States of America. I ask for no higher 

^ Those who prefer it can speak of labour force, but we do not speak of 
engine force and horse force as articles of commerce. If one requires a portion of 
horse labour, he is not said to huy a couple of hours of horse force, but to hire 
the horse for a couple of hours. Such parlance is both more in accordance with 
usage and also more accurate. Metaphysical expressions like labour force are 
always best avoided. Therefore, let us rather describe a workman as letting him- 
self out for hire by the hour than as selling so much of his labour force ; more 
especially as we have no means of accurately measuring that force except by time. 
One might as well measure the force of two different-sized locomotives in terms 
of working hours. 



VII LABOUR CAPITALISATION 215 

estimate. And yet what is the worth of a civilised man, if he 
would but claim his liberty and work as only a free man can ? 
— not too long, not too monotonously, but intelligently and 
economically, with an interest in his work, and a love for his 
art or his craft ? And what then would be the workman's 
share of production ? That he has a right to the whole profits 
of his labour is the contention of the capitalisationist. He 
does not recommend the employer to " give " him a share by 
way of bonus — he holds that the profits on labour belong to 
the labourer by rigM and not by favour. He believes that 
the time will come when the hiring of a man will be as un- 
common a transaction as the purchase of a slave is now. 

But at present the bargain entered into between employer 
and employed is a contract of hiring — locatio operarum. 
Practically the transaction amounts to this : The workman says 
to the capitalist, " Here I am ; you see me for yourself ; I can 
do such or such kind of work. You want that kind of work 
done. You think that by the process of combining the capital 
you have with my labour you will gain a profit. I don't 
know, and I don't care ; at the same time, I don't mean to run 
any risk. I reckon myself worth ninepence an hour ; give me 
that, and you have me and my labour and skill for what they 
are worth ; put me at profitable work, put me at unprofitable 
work ; I don't care a straw which. If you stop paying, I stop 
work ; and if I stop work you can stop payment. The 
quantity and quality of my work will not be below the average, 
but of course I am not fool enough to do more than that for 
the sake of enriching you. I shan't scamp any more than I 
think safe, because if you find me out scamping more than the 
average I shall get the sack." To which the capitalist replies, 
" All right ; ninepence an hour ; and twenty-four hours a day, 
or as much of it as you can manage without food, drink, rest 
or recreation. I shall hire you by the hour, and when my 
process is completed you will leave if it does not pay me to 
repeat it. I see my way to earn 20 per cent, and, if so, I 
shall hire you again ; if not, you can go and hang yourself." 
And so the bargain is struck. 

Now the worker knows, or ought to know, that on the 
average the industrial process is profitable ; the average profit 



2i6 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

on capital is about 3 per cent. This is the reward of ab- 
stinence, and it is called interest. It is not the reward of risk. 
If security were absolute, in the strictest sense of the word, 
even then money could not be borrowed on it for 1 per cent. 
Owners would rather consume than invest at less than a 
certain minimum. And yet the workman voluntarily foregoes 
his interest rather than invest his labour at a risk. He would 
otherwise incur the trouble of looking into the venture ; he 
might actually incur a loss ; on the whole, he prefers the 
happy security of the cab -horse to the responsibility of a 
capitalist. Whether his caution is rightly called prudence will 
be seen on examination. At all events, the employer hires the 
labourer, invests his labour, takes all risk, and pockets all 
profits (including interest). And quite right too, if — if he 
first offered the workman the choice of putting his labour into 
the concern at a venture as a capitalist. 

It seems to have escaped the notice of most writers on social 
subjects that the ordinary employer of labour performs no less 
than three, distinct functions : — 

1st. He is a capitalist pure and simple; that is, one whose 
business is to examine every kind of investment with a view 
to estimating the risk thereof, and to invest his own (and in 
some cases his clients') capital accordingly. This process 
requires study, long and careful training, and vast experience. 
It is seen in its purest form on the Stock Exchange. It also 
constitutes the chief function of bankers. 

2d. He is what may be called a superintending worker or 
manager, a position which calls for an intimate knowledge of 
every branch of the business in which he is engaged. Attention 
must be paid to the minutest economies in each department, 
and to the co-ordination of all — a function which is altogether 
apart from that of speculation, and which is in itself sufficient 
to absorb the energies of a lifetime. 

3d. Lastly, the employer stands in a remarkable position 
with respect to some of those who contribute towards the 
process over which he presides. He actually undertakes to 
guarantee the labourers a certain average remuneration for 
their services. He is in the unenviable position of a company 
which should be formed for the purpose of granting an annuity 



VII LABOUR CAPITALISATION 217 

to professional men in exchange for their fluctuating incomes. 
Would a doctor get up at all hours of the night if he had 
compounded with such a company to hand over all his fees for 
£500 a year ? The work of the company would be precisely 
analogous to the third function of the present employer of 
labour. He has to guarantee the wages of workmen who have 
no reason to care whether the work is done or not, whether the 
process is profitable or not, so long as they can keep their 
places, or get others equally good. The employer undertakes 
these three distinct roles — speculator, organiser, wage insurer. 
And when a man undertakes to do two or three different things 
at a time, he is pretty sure to do all badly. When a 
carpenter sets up as doctor and horse-dealer, he is likely to 
lose at all three undertakings, and to cheat and humbug his 
customers besides. The employer tries to combine the distinct 
operations of evaluating risk in trade, of organising and 
superintending work, and of ensuring the success of other 
people's investments — other people, forsooth, who have little or 
no interest in the success of the investments ! Is it surprising, 
then, that his ventures are often hastily and foolishly calculated, 
that his works are often superintended badly, and at great 
expense, and that those with whom he compounds for their 
labour turn out year by year less and less worth the com- 
position ? 

These three functions, if undertaken at all, should be 
divided among three distinct classes of persons. In some 
cases this specialisation has taken place already with regard 
to speculation. The professional investor (say banker) who 
borrows money at interest from clients who care not to run 
risk, and invests it in a hundred more or less doubtful specula- 
tions, is a useful and even necessary member of modern society. 
Manufacturers who speculate least, and rely for profits on the 
economic working of their own arrangements, are, as a rule, 
the most successful. But as to the third function, no company 
has ever yet been started with the simple object of guaranteeing 
either manual workers or any other class of workers a uniform 
return for their work, for the obvious reason that it could 
not pay to do it except at an exorbitant rate. What the 
premium is which the employer requires for undertaking, the 



2i8 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

insurance of his workpeople's earnings it is impossible to say, 
mixed up as it is with his profit and loss account ; but we 
may safely affirm that, taken by itself, this part of his business 
is folly so far as he himself is concerned, and ruinous to his 
clients. 

And what is the observed effect of the system of wagedom 
or labour-hiring on the working classes themselves ? It is 
obvious that in many respects the interests of masters and 
men, so far from being identical, actually conflict. 

" The minimum wage is that on which the worker can exist, how- 
ever hardly. For less than this he will not work. Every shilling 
above this is fonght over, and the wage rises and falls by competition. 
At every stage of their relationship there is a contest between employer 
and employed. If the wage is paid for a fixed day's work — as in nearly 
every trade — the employer tries to lengthen the day, the employed try 
to shorten it : the longer the day the greater the production of ' surplus 
value,' i.e. of the difference between the wage paid and the value 
produced. The employer tries to increase surplus value by pressing the 
workers to exertion ; they lessen exertion in order not to hasten the 
time of their discharge. The employer tries still to increase surplus 
value by supplanting male labour with female and child labour at lower 
wages. The men resist such introduction, knowing that the ultimate 
result is to increase the amount taken by capital and to lessen that 
obtained by labour." ^ 

This is a perfectly truthful statement of the position, 
showing that the present system necessarily tends to bring 
employers and employed into collision. 

The rate of profits in all trades varies from age to age, 
from year to year, and from day to day. The diurnal varia- 
tions are commonly minute, and so far unimportant ; and the 
variations during long periods, corresponding with the rise of 
some trades and the decline of some others in the country or 
district, have their effects obscured by lapse of time ; labour 
is diverted into new channels before low profits have time to 
pinch the labourer. But what may be called the annual 
variations are neither too small nor too gradual to be felt, and 
it is with these that labourers are concerned. The sea has its 
tides, its waves, and its ripples, but it is the waves, and the 
waves only, that make us so sea-sick. 

^ Westminster Review , July 1886. 



VII LABOUR CAPITALISATION 219 

When employers are making their 20 per cent is it 
reasonable to expect the workman, whose toil has mainly 
contributed to the high profit, to sit down content with his 
minimum wage as he did when profits were at 5 or 6 per 
cent ? Clearly, wages must be raised or the men strike ; and 
what is more, are frequently backed up by public opinion and 
favoured by opportunity. Masters do not care to be idle in 
prosperous times, and the men know it, and sooner or later 
their demand is granted or a favourable compromise effected. 
Then follows a period of good fortune and tranquillity of some 
duration. 

Meanwhile, with little or no experience of vicissitudes, 
our working man has married on the strength of the rise, or 
perhaps his children have increased in number, or he pays a 
higher rent for a better cottage, or his family has accustomed 
itself to additional comforts. And now comes the decline. 
The prosperity of the trade has attracted new capital, or the 
demand has contracted to its old limits, and profits sink again 
to the original level or below it. It is now the master's turn 
to grumble and ask for change ; he very naturally determines 
to reduce wages. The workman as naturally resists. His 
scale of living has been modified to suit improved circum- 
stances ; he has become accustomed to the new rate of wages, 
and now he cannot well go back or retrench. Another conflict 
ensues, and one or other of the combatants goes to the wall. 
No one believes that this state of strain, this incessant struggle, 
is desirable ; every strike entails untold misery and waste, no 
matter what the result may be ; and yet under the present 
system of wagedom there does not appear to be any loophole 
out of the difficulty. An eternal see-saw ! Pull baker, pull 
devil ! Such is the cheerless prospect. 

Trade unionism is the outcome of an organised effort to 
apply a remedy from the workman's point of view. It is 
based on the principle of the bundle of sticks — " union is 
strength." But men are not sticks, and the weak point in 
trade organisation is mutual distrust. If the men knew 
their strength, and could trust one another, the end aimed at 
would long ago have been attained. But what an end ! Ever- 
lasting wagedom ; forced reduction of the fruit of labour because 



220 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

it now passes into the wrong hands ; restricted total production, 
as though overproduction were possible while there are hungry 
mouths to fill ; and, above all, a gradual tendency in the 
direction of deteriorated labour ; the exercise of superior 
strength, skill, genius, all prohibited ; and the quantity and 
quality of work brought down to the standard of the inferior 
workman ; in short, a levelling down of the industrial classes. 
Such is the end unconsciously aimed at by the trade unions. 

It is clear that the solidarity of the wage earners with the 
object of doing as little real work as possible in a given time, 
and of obtaining a statutory limitation of working hours, is 
advocated by those who do not realise the ultimate effect of 
their endeavour. Of course if the effectual demand for the 
commodities they help to produce continued the same whether 
the supply was large or small, costly or cheap, their aim. would 
be a highly meritorious one. The effect of their efforts, if 
successful, would be to increase the proportionate share of the 
worker in the total produce for distribution ; that is to say, 
while he would individually receive no less, the wage -earning 
population would increase in order to fill up the deficiency in 
labour caused by the restricted out -put of each individual 
worker. In itself an increased population, without any in- 
creased pressure on the means of subsistence, is a good rather 
than an evil (that is, supposing that " life is worth living "). 

But the actual chain of the effects of unionism, as now 
directed, would be this : first, there is a falling off in the 
supply of labour (measured by time and energy), a conscious 
and intentional falling off; next, the demand for the things 
the labourers help to produce remaining constant at present 
prices, the demand for labourers is stimulated ; wages rise ; 
population increases till wages are again reduced to subsistence 
level ; and the position is the same except that there are more 
labourers at work supplying the old quantity of commodities 
at the old wage. But, since the cost of the capital remains 
the same, and the cost of labourers has been increased (just in 
proportion to the increase of workers), the price of the total 
production of the country must be raised to cover the extra 
cost, all of which extra sum goes to maintain the new popula- 
tion. Capital receives no more than before, but the rise in 



LABOUR CAPITALISATION 



cost, and consequent rise in prices, necessarily checks the 
demand, i.e. the effectual demand. In the place of a hundred 
coats, or tables, or carriages, or pianos, that were asked for 
before, only eighty are asked for now. Some people seem to 
imagine that the effect of this shrinkage in the demand would 
be to at once lower prices again permanently. Nothing of the 
sort. Prices would fall at once, but not permanently. The 
expected reduction would not come out of profits, because 
profits cannot permanently fall below a certain normal per- 
centage on capital. The effect of a fall is to drive capital 
out of circulation and into the absolute securities. And the 
reduction cannot come out of wages, because they are already 
at a minimum. Hence a permanent reduction in price cannot 
be made at all. The alternative is a restricted production. 
Capital flows out, and the demand for labourers correspondingly 
diminishes, and population must again dwindle. How ? we 
all know. Wages cannot permanently fall below the minimum. 
Temporarily, no doubt, the fall does take place, and then the 
weakness of unionism shows itself. The strain is too much 
for it : a dozen men are famishing on a raft ; a promise to 
stand by one another and to live or starve together might be 
binding on some few, but a terrible strain would be put on 
the morale of most by the instinct of self-preservation. This 
is an extreme example, but there is only a difference of degree 
between the case of these starving men and that of the general 
body of wage earners when depression in trade causes a 
necessary reduction in wages. All may try to live and work 
at something less than is needful for health, or even sometimes 
life, or some may break the contract and accept twice the 
wage for three times the amount of work. Whoever first 
does this sets the ball rolling. The merest rumour that out of 
six conspirators in prison one is going to turn informer causes 
a general rush. To be behindhand is to be lost. So with 
wage earners ; a general distrust sets in, and the union is but 
a name. 

Meantime, what is the effect of this policy on the quality 
of the workers themselves ? There is no inducement to excel. 
Anything like superiority is ruthlessly crushed out. The 
labourer becomes less and less productive in proportion to the 



222 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

capital with which he has to co-operate, and the fruits of 
labour become smaller compared with the amount of labour 
contributed to production. Further, the increased cost of the 
labourer (of labour hire) in proportion to its productiveness 
stimulates the inventor to devise substitutes, and this again is 
rendered easier by the mechanical character of the work to be 
done. If men begin by reducing themselves to the level of 
unskilled labourers, they will end by being mere machines, and 
when that happens it is often easy to invent an iron machine 
to do the work as well or better and at a less cost. No one 
has yet invented a machine for doing work fit for a free man. 
Perhaps, if no other argument could be urged against wagedom, 
the mere fact that the whole of the gain from labour-saving 
machinery has fallen into the hands of the employer, in- 
stead of into the hands of the class to whose members it is 
almost entirely due, would suffice to condemn it. 

Now it is clear that if instead of accepting wages — letting 
themselves out for hire by the week or the hour — the workers 
entered into the venture as capitalists and free men, receiving, 
instead of a fixed wage, a certain pre-arranged percentage of 
the gross produce (a percentage at first based on a calculation 
of the amount paid in wages over a number of years), the 
receipts of the hands would vary like the profits of other 
capitalists with the success of the venture and the state of 
trade. When trade was good the men would be receiving con- 
siderably more than usual, and no strike would be necessary 
in order to give them a fair share of the general prosperity. 
When trade became depressed their share would decrease pro- 
portionately with that of the other capitalists, and neither 
strike nor lock-out would result from a diminution in their 
income. The masters would have no reason to demand an 
arbitrary reduction in the scale of labour remuneration, as 
they have now. Thus the cause of strikes would be eradicated. 

It has almost invariably been observed that, as matter of 
history, the successful strikes have been those which were 
based on justice or common-sense fairness and attended with 
public sympathy, while those strikes which have been made in 
response to a fair claim on the part of the " masters " to a 
reasonable reduction of wages have usually been unsuccessful. 



VII LABOUR CAPITALISATION 223 

If, therefore, the workpeople under the supposed new conditions 
should clamour to extort alms (for it would be nothing less) 
from their employers, in flagrant violation of contract, and in 
face of every reason to the contrary, a few inevitable failures 
would soon teach them wisdom. Public opinion could never 
side against employers who, in a period of depressed trade and 
low profits, were being called upon to raise their work- 
people's share of the receipts, and that in spite of con- 
tract ; nor is it likely that such a demand would be made. 
Thus it appears, whatever the advantages or disadvantages of 
the capitalisation of labour, one thing is certain, and that is 
that strikes would completely disappear. 

Another important effect of the system will be the equi- 
libration of supply and demand in the labour market during 
times of expansion and depression. It is well known that in 
periods of great commercial distress large manufacturers are in 
the habit of keeping their works going, and paying full wages, 
even though they may be working at a dead loss, in order to 
keep the hands together to be ready with the full complement 
in case of revival ; and also in many cases for another reason, 
namely, as a blind to their creditors, to whom a sudden con- 
traction of business would be a revelation. And then, when 
the depression has continued too long for endurance, batch 
after batch of workmen and women are indiscriminately dis- 
missed ; not those who are best qualified to obtain a livelihood 
in other occupations, but, if anything, rather the reverse. 
Under the new system, when trade is bad and profits low, the 
hands will suffer equally with the masters ; those of them 
who know other crafts will prefer to change their work rather 
than go on at very low pay ; and having thus ceased to drag 
at the " wage fund," will leave behind them those least qualified 
to change their occupation. Those who go will gain, and 
those who remain will gain. 

Thus the action of the new system will resemble the action 
of the governor balls in a steam-engine ; that is to say, it will 
substitute automatic equilibration for intermittent readjustment. 
A more perfect analogy cannot be found. A smooth continuous 
readjustment by infinitesimal adaptations is, all will admit, 
vastly better than artificial readjustments at comparatively 



224 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

long intervals and by rule of thumb. In the engine an accel- 
erated pace causes the governor balls to fly out at a tangent, 
and by rising to shut off steam and so to slacken the pace ; 
V7hich slackening of the pace causes the balls to fall, and 
thereby to put on steam and so accelerate the pace. So that 
in fact the acceleration of the pace is the cause of its slacken- 
ing, and "Dice, veo^sd. This is true equilibrium. And so in trade 
a falling off in profits would at once bring about a diminution in 
the number of the recipients of those profits, and thereby raise 
the average profits received by the remaining recipients. The 
rate of labour payment will no longer limp and hobble up and 
down after the rate of profits, dragged by fits and starts, as it 
were by an elastic chain, but will accompany it, while at the 
same time the number of those who divide the labour share 
will dwindle pai^i passu with the dwindling of the profits. 

An incidental result of this self-reduction in the number of 
hands in response to a falling off in profits will be the conse- 
quent temporary limitation of production, an effect greatly to 
be desired ; an effect, too, obtained without imposing enforced 
idleness upon the working classes at a time when they are 
least anxious to be idle. This beautiful self-adjustment of 
the industrial machine is one of the most convincing proofs of 
the soundness of the system. 

Again, the gradually growing perception of the manual 
worker that he is himself a capitalist will fairly give the 
death-blow to the suicidal policy of trying to injure the 
employer by permanently limiting production, keeping down 
stock, or shortening the hours of labour and the quantity of 
work to be done per hour. The last-named object will be 
brought about in another way, and with a very different effect, 
as will presently be shown. Finding by experience that they 
themselves are actually capitalists — that their own and their 
employers' interests are identical (which at present they are 
not, whatever may be said to the contrary) ; that masters and 
workmen are all in the same boat — they will all pull together, 
and do their best for the common weal ; and so will be brought 
to an end the great internecine war between " capital and 
labour." The moral effect of this change on all classes and on 
the stability of the State cannot be over-rated. 



VII LABOUR CAPITALISATION 225 

True morality is the result not of being preached at but 
of practical experience. We hear a great deal on all sides of 
the " improvidence of the working classes '* ; but, even if true, 
is it very remarkable ? Under the system of wagedom the 
workman receives weekly a fixed sum, which he very naturally 
regards as practically an income to be relied on. True, a 
depression in trade may bring about a reduction, but not with- 
out a long notice and probably a fierce fight ; or he may 
possibly be among those who are dismissed altogether ; but 
this is a remote and improbable contingency, to set off against 
which there is the chance of a rise in wages and the possibility 
of promotion. On the whole then it is only reasonable that 
he should regard his present wage as a fixed income, up to 
which he may live, but which must not be exceeded. That 
this is the view taken by most working men is well known, 
and the consequences are equally well known. The day of 
decline comes ; the inevitable reduction is at hand ; retrench- 
ment must be made. It is true that the labourer ought to 
have laid up provision against probable or possible mishap, but 
having jogged along for years at a fixed wage, how, in the 
name of reason, is providence to be learnt ? Bearing in mind 
that trade cycles are about ten years in length or thereabouts, 
it follows that a young man starting work at fifteen may never 
know what it is to have his income set back until he is twenty- 
five, with a wife and children and an accustomed standard of com- 
fort. Is it in the nature of most men, having earned thirty- 
one shillings, to walk down on a Saturday to the penny-bank 
in order to deposit the odd shilling over and above the thirty 
shillings required at home, in case it may be wanted five or six 
years hence ? Of course it goes after the rest, just to give an 
extra fillip to existence — in beer, gin, tobacco, or any other 
article that serves to justify a little chat at the public-house. 
Hence it follows that a reduction of wages is sometimes tanta- 
mount to the ruin, or at least disgrace, of the workman. 

N"ow what will be the effect of the capitalisation system ? 
The employer ceases to insure his workpeople ; they will 
have to insure themselves. One week they will receive their 
thirty shillings, and the next their twenty, instead of a uniform 
twenty-five. That is to say, they will each week (or it may 

Q 



226 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

be each quarter) receive the real value of their work, instead 
of the average value reckoned over a very long period. Thus 
they will learn providence by experience, daily experience, as 
their masters have done, for they will be compelled to put by 
the surplus on good weeks to make up for inevitable de- 
ficiences on bad weeks. ]!^o preaching will inculcate 
providence. Experience alone can teach it, and yet this very 
experience is denied to our working classes. Whether they 
like it or no, their average earnings are insured for them, and 
they are in the position of a manufacturer who should accept 
a fixed annuity for the profits of his business. 

But further, the new system will conduce to mitigate the 
notorious improvidence of our labouring population in yet 
another way. Any recipient of a fluctuating income knows 
very well that he considers himself justified in living up to 
the minimum and not the average annual receipt. That is his 
standard, and all above that is regarded as so much " to the 
good." So that an artisan whose earnings fluctuate between 
twenty and thirty shillings will spend not the average twenty- 
five, but the minimum twenty shillings, and the balance will 
be put by. 

Why are we always preaching " thrift " to the poor ? 
What is thrift as distinguished from economy ? It is the 
taking care of inconsiderable margins — minute balances of 
income over necessary expenditure. And what is the main 
cause of, and chief inducement to, thrift among the well-to-do 
classes ? I have no hesitation in saying that it is the 
fluctuation in their incomes. Let me explain. When a 
professional man whose annual expenses, according to his 
scale of living, are £300 a year, finds his income one year 
amount to £320, and another year to £280, he is com- 
pelled to save the surplus in the one year to make good 
the loss in the other year. He cannot tell exactly what the 
next year's income may be, and therefore instead of saving 
part of his extra savings only, he saves the whole. But if he 
found that his income was always exactly £305 a year, he 
would be sorely tempted to throw the odd £5 away in the 
purchase of little luxuries. This is actually the case with 
those annuitants who have no one to provide for but 



VII LABOUR CAPITALISATION 227 

themselves. So if the workman whose household expenses 
are thirty shillings a week, and whose wages are thirty -one 
shillings, flings away the odd shilling upon any little luxuries 
that come in his way, he is by no means an unnatural 
specimen of his kind. It would take a couple of years' saving 
to cover a month's extra wage, and two years is a long time. 
Besides, there is very little inducement to put it by at all. 
But now suppose his income to fluctuate ; he will then find it 
very easy, when he must put by four shillings, to put by the odd 
fifth shilling along with it ; the shilling which now, through its 
very insignificance, is virtually thrown away or worse. A 
distinct effort of volition will be required in order to hold it 
back. A deliberate intention of spending so much a week in 
luxuries will have to take the place of a careless habit. Has 
any one ever attempted to estimate the enormous gain to the 
country which this aggregate thrift would bring about ? Out 
of the twenty-five millions a year and more which the revenue 
derives from the taxes on beer, wine, and spirits, how much is 
due to the odd shillings and sixpences that are spent at the 
public by the respectable and steady workman, merely because 
it is in his pocket, it is not particularly needed at home, and 
he has nothing better to do with it ? 

Money put by in a bank means a demand for capital as 
opposed to a demand for articles of direct consumption. It is 
no exaggeration to estimate the annual increase of capital in 
the country on the establishment of a proper system of labour 
payment at many millions a year. 

We know enough of the effect of a joint interest in 
undertakings and in property to be able to predict with 
absolute certainty several other important effects which a 
just system of labour remuneration would have upon produc- 
tion. 

To begin with, inasmuch as the workers will feel them- 
selves to be practically partners in the concern, as in effect 
they will be (the legal aspect will be considered presently), 
each workman, finding himself a member of a great partner- 
ship, will be properly and justly jealous of the rest, and the 
idler will be shunned and got rid of. Dick will not work ten 
hours in order that Tom may work eight, both receiving the 



228 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

same pay ; nor will he work hard in order that Tom may 
loiter. It does not matter to Dick nowadays, it does not 
affect his own wages what Tom gets nor how Tom works ; but 
it will be a different matter when Tom's laziness diminishes 
the total of which Dick takes a share. Nor will Dick make 
things equal by loitering too. N"ot a bit of it. The tendency 
w411 be not, as now, to level down, but to level up. The lazy 
and unskilled must become industrious and skilful, or go to the 
wall. The men will be jointly and severally their own 
overlookers ; and, little by little, an immense, cumbrous, and 
costly organisation of overlookers will be dispensed with. This 
is item one in diminished cost of production. 

At present the workman very naturally regards his em- 
ployer as a rival or an enemy — so he is ; and unless he be 
more than ordinarily high -principled, he scamps his work, or 
at least gets as much pay as he can for as little effort as 
possible. And who shall say that he is not justified in so 
doing ? It is the world-wide practice. And yet how much 
do these few words signify : " As much pay for as little work 
as possible " ! Why, they mean that British industry (and 
that of other countries) is the result of slave-driving, of grudged 
labour, of exacted work ; and this means that the work done 
is less than a half of what it would be under a regime of 
justice and common sense — and of incalculably inferior quality. 
Hence the need for efl&cient overlooking. The salaries of 
overlookers is an important factor in the cost of production. 
And yet what can an overlooker do ? You may lead your ox 
to the water, but you cannot make him drink. He may 
enforce the appearance of work, but not the true article. He 
cannot infuse into his toiling subjects the spirit of the old 
builders, whose work was a labour of love, whose soul was in 
their art, and whose reward was the toil itself Such is the 
work of the independent and self-interested worker. It is not 
the work of the slave, who sweats for another. Mercenaries 
are not the soldiers for a forlorn hope, nor have the grandest 
works of art been made to order at so much a day. Over- 
lookers are indeed quite necessary under the present system ; 
but abolish them altogether, make the men their own over- 
lookers, overlookers of greater efficiency and ubiquitous withal, 



VII LABOUR CAPITALISATION 229 

and what a saving in cost of production we have here, to say 
nothing of the moral effect of the change ! 

But this elimination is by no means the greatest reduction 
in cost of production ; for when industry is rendered coincident 
with self-interest, every man will naturally and cheerfully 
work as hard and as well as he can — at least it will be his 
interest to do so, and not, as now, to shirk and scamp. Wher- 
ever anything approaching to this system has been tried, as in 
" butty-gangs," or in piece-work, or in other modifications, as 
in the slate-quarries in Wales, it has always been found to 
succeed ; and even when a share of net profits has been 
allotted as a bonus to overlookers, the result has been satisfac- 
tory, and this in spite of the blind attempts of the Legislature 
to regulate the joint efforts with a view to gain of more than 
a very few persons. The object of the men, as of the masters, 
will be to make as much as possible of that quality of article 
which pays best in the market — a quality which, though not 
always necessarily superfine, is what it appears to be, and good 
of its sort. Cheap goods are as much in demand, or more, 
than dear ones, though the quality is known to be inferior. 
One does not expect honeydew when one asks for shag, or 
velvet when one asks for velveteen. Fifteen carat gold is as 
honest as eighteen carat, and probably drives a better trade. 
But the inferior quality which is to be deprecated is the 
sham. Even masters are not fully awake to the difierence 
between a cheap article and a sham one, between butterine 
sold as such, and butterine sold as butter. The scamping of 
workmen has much to answer for, but it is doubtful whether 
manufacturers are not the more culpable of the two. Be this 
as it may, the existing tendency to scamp work will, under 
the new system, diminish 'pari passu with the increased 
experience of the workman ; and the imposing suite of chairs 
and tables from which the castors drop off, and the veneer 
begins to peel on an hour's exposure to the fire, will be a thing 
of the past. In other words, the manufacturers will cease to 
be deceived in the quality of the goods they manufacture, and 
to this extent at least the public will benefit. The perfidity 
of manufacturers has of late received a considerable and well- 
merited punishment, which may prove a valuable lesson for 



230 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

the future, so that an improvement in the quality of goods all 
round may be anticipated when the hands become partners. 

The more immediate effect of the change would, however, 
be on the quantity of work done. This has already been 
observed under parallel circumstances, and it is probably no 
exaggeration to say that, were all the labourers vitally interested 
in getting through as much work as possible, instead of as 
little as possible, the same number of hours would produce 
at least twice the present quantity. Any one who has. 
watched bricklayers at work on ordinary occasions may have 
been struck with the remarkable, almost studied sluggishness 
of their movements ; and if he has also observed the same 
men at work under the stimulus of a prize on condition of 
completing a promised wall within a given time, he will have 
been amazed at the contrast. It is confidently reiterated that 
the new system would more than double the amount of goods 
produced in this country. 

Another important source of economy would be the proper 
apportionment of time to the quality of effort ; for the 
labourers will admittedly be the best judges of their own 
hours of labour. They will wish to work as much as possible, 
but not as long as possible. Dr. Whewell, speaking of the 
value of time for the purposes of study, used to say : " Four 
and two make six ; six and two make four ; " meaning that 
the man who read eight hours a day did no better than the 
man who read four. Six hours, he thought, is the largest 
amount of time which can economically be spent in intellectual 
study. So it is with other branches of work. Some kinds of 
labour may be economically continued for ten or even twelve 
hours a day, whilst others cannot be wisely prolonged beyond 
four or five. Such differences in the nature of work do exist 
as all men well know except members of Parliament who 
persistently legislate on the assumption that no such variations 
exist. When, therefore, the aim of any body of working men 
is to get through as much work as possible, they will find out 
by experience what is the best length of time to work per day, 
taking the nature of the work into the calculation, and being 
guided in their decision by a proper regard to the economy of 
their forces. That is to say, if by working hard seven hours 



VII LABOUR CAPITALISATION 231 

a day they find they can accomplish as much as by working 
at a necessarily reduced expenditure of force for eight hours, 
they will prefer seven to eight hours. 

Another saving in the cost of production deserves mention. 
It is obvious a 'priori that men who are handling tools and 
machinery and materials which belong to others, and in which 
they have no personal interest, cannot be expected to treat 
them with the same care and regard for economy which they 
.exercise over their own property. It is not in human nature 
to do it. Both Eoman and English law make a distinction 
based on this observed fact in man's nature. But where all 
these things are the subject of the labourer's own concern, 
even though not his own property, it is clear a -priori and 
observed as a fact that much waste and some mischief are in 
consequence avoided. 

We have seen that the immediate and direct results of 
adopting the just system of capitalisation would be many and 
great. There would be an immensely-augmented ratio of gross 
produce to cost. Average profits would at first be greatly in- 
creased in proportion to outlay, and in addition to that the total 
outlay would be correspondingly stimulated. This would be 
effected in several ways. The total quantity of work done 
would be much greater ; the value of each portion of the pro- 
duce would be greater by reason of its superior quality ; the cost 
of over-looking would be indefinitely diminished ; the natural 
expenditure of human force in proportion not to time but to 
economy would result in an enormous gain. Other kinds of 
capital, both of those whose consumption is essential to pro- 
duction and of those whose consumption is merely accidental 
(though inevitable), would be more carefully treated, and waste 
and extravagance checked. The friction in trade due to class 
antagonism, and resulting in strikes and checks to industry of 
one sort and another, would be got rid of, and power now 
wasted would be saved by natural equilibration. 

But the greatest economy of all would be made in the 
investment of labour. And the result would be that, although 
profits on other forms of capital would greatly increase, the 
profits on labour would increase in still greater proportion ; so 
that not only would there be a larger total to divide, but the 



232 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

manual- workers' share of that larger total would also be greatly 
increased. And, above all, it would be permanent, and not 
liable to be swallowed up by increased population. 

But the workman's fear lest the reward of labour should 
in bad times fall below its present low level is groundless. It 
could never even reach it in the worst periods of depression. 
Apart from the total amount of produce to be distributed, the 
greater proportionate share of the manual worker under the 
new system will effectually preclude such an occurrence. And 
then again the habits of thrift (reasonable, economic thrift) 
and providence will render the danger less serious, even in the 
worst of times. Add to which the fact that the increase of 
population will have no tendency to reduce labour reward to 
the level of means of subsistence any more than it now has to 
reduce the reward of professional men and investors of accumu- 
lated wealth to that level. The true cost of increasingly-skilled 
workers in every craft will regulate the pay of labour, and not 
the mere cost of the labourer's maintenance during the process. 
This is, of course, the key to the true solution of the labour 
question. 

Of course I am prepared for the objection of the " ortho- 
dox " : " You forget that the workers must have their wages 
advanced, and that this is why the capitalist pockets the interest 
on labour." 'No, I do not forget it, but I do not believe it. It 
is a convenient fiction ; and, moreover, it is dishonest, for if it 
were true it would not justify the exaction. The moment a 
labourer has turned a handle, or stuck a spade in the ground, 
he has earned at least the value of his services for that second 
of time. To talk of giving him an advance is common 
chicanery.^ Workmen convert timber into a half- finished 
boat, which the capitalist can at any moment sell for ten or 
twelve times the original value of his timber, and yet he has 
the impudence to tell them that they have no claim upon him 
till the boat is completed, and that any payment they may 
require during the process is of the nature of an advance, for 
which he must charge as for a loan. 

1 Those who would see this fallacy clearly exposed may refer to a work with 
which I am not in accord, viz. Mr, Henry George's Progress and Poverty, where 
they will find the trick properly shown up. 



VII LABOUR CAPITALISATION 233 

Let US examine this contention. Clearly, if the workman 
comes to one who has put capital into the same venture and 
asks for a loan to enable him to subsist till the process is 
complete, the position is precisely similar to what it would be 
if the worker applied to an outsider, to one who had not put 
capital into the venture. The lender would of course have a 
just claim to interest on the loan, but to pretend that the 
payment of labourers 'pari passu with the progress of their 
work in a transaction of this kind is trifling with common 
sense. The worker has already earned his pay. He has a 
just lien on the half-finished product, which he has a right to 
sell whenever he thinks fit. The orthodox contention is 
tantamount to saying that the workman is worth nothing at 
all — that he is a useful natural agent like the wind or the 
waves or the sunlight, without any value whatever; that 
the cost of hiring labour is, and should be, the cost of his 
subsistence during the process. In the words of the arch- 
economist himself — John Stuart Mill — " whatever things are 
destined to supply productive labour with the shelter, pro- 
tection, tools and materials which the work requires, and to 
feed and otherwise maintain the lahourers during the process, 
are capital." If this fallacy is not exposed by reasoning, the 
labourers will be justified in exposing it by an argument of 
another and convincing kind. 

This objection being disposed of there can be no reason 
why the men's share should not be handed over to them at any 
time, weekly if necessary. The manner of making this pay- 
ment will be explained presently. 

Lest this should appear to some to be too sanguine a forecast, 
and the whole system of capitalisation merely another Utopia, let 
me hasten to point out, before proceeding to consider its remoter 
effects, certain facts which should not be lost sight of in treat- 
ing of any great social change. Sound revolutions are usually 
slow. Eome was not built in a day, but it was burnt while 
:N"ero fiddled.^ 

^ I do not guarantee the historical accuracy of this statement, and my reason 
for making this disclaimer is the fear that some hostile critic will pulverise my 
arguments in favour of capitalisation by pointing out either that the fire broke 
out before Nero began to fiddle, or that Nero stopped fiddling before the fire 
was extinguished. Perhaps so. 



234 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

To begin with, the system cannot be introduced all along 
the line. Only certain classes of workers are as yet sufficiently 
advanced for the reform. It would probably be useless as yet 
to attempt to apply it to agriculture, where the labourers are 
only now casting off the last fetters of serfdom. E'er would 
it succeed at present in small concerns conducted on hand-to- 
mouth principles. It must have its beginning in the large 
coal and iron and textile fabric industries, in the cotton-mills, 
the foundries, and the collieries. There it is already known, or 
easily ascertainable, exactly what proportion of the gross receipts 
of the business has been paid away in wages any year these 
ten years. An average can be struck at once on the basis of 
the last year, or three years, or seven years, as may seem good 
to both parties, and a bargain struck. Whatever the propor- 
tion may be, let that proportion of the total receipts be paid to 
the hands in future, at such intervals as may suit both parties, 
either weekly or (as will eventually be the case) at stock- 
taking. 

Once set on foot, the advantages to both parties would 
ensure its rapid spread in all directions and with increasing 
velocity. And the time is perhaps not far distant when the 
old system of wagedom will be regarded as an interesting 
survival, in holes and corners, of a practice once nearly 
universal. 

I would, however, add that any attempt on the part of the 
Legislature to force the system upon the country would be 
worse than useless. Among peoples unprepared for it by long 
habits of self-help such a course would be positively mis- 
chievous, and it is probable that, with the exception of 
Great Britain and the United States of America, and the Anglo- 
Saxon Colonies, few nations are even yet ripe for its intro- 
duction. 

A beginning is easily made. The working classes in the 
large industries must themselves take the lead. The masters 
ought not to be slow to follow, and the completion of the task 
may be left to time without much anxiety as to its eventual 
success ; for, apart from the favour or disfavour with which it 
may be regarded in commercial circles, the capitalisation of 
labour is based on principles from which there is no appeal. 



VII LABOUR CAPITALISATION 235 

Approved or disapproved by masters or by men, or both, it 
must assuredly come into force sooner or later. Then, and not 
till then, shall we be in a position to say that the labour ques- 
tion has been practically solved. 

The more remote effects of the new system now come into 
view. One change follows on the heels of another. When 
once it becomes every man's interest to work as hard as he 
can, and, what is more, to see that his fellows do the same, it 
will soon become evident that the best mode of obtaining new 
hands is by letting the old ones elect them. It will clearly be 
their interest to elect the best workers, and at the same time 
to elect those who will come for a reasonable share. For it is 
obvious that where the labourers as a body receive such or 
such a share of the gross returns, each individual's share must 
needs vary inversely as the sum of the shares of the others. 
Hence every workman will be interested in keeping down the 
share of his fellows to its fair limit. This mode of election 
of new hands will bring into existence something like regular 
meetings of the men and the election of officers and a president ; 
and it will soon appear natural and expedient to the employer 
to pay over the whole of the labourer's share in a lump to the 
workmen's president, to be distributed amongst them in their 
own way, and as they, in council assembled, shall from time to 
time assess and decree. Not only the differences in the values 
of labour in, the several branches and departments in every 
manufacture, but also the differences in the values of the work- 
manship of individual members of the body, are difficult to 
appreciate, and they never are accurately appreciated at all by 
employers, who indeed ignore the latter inequalities altogether. 
Quite otherwise will this be when the matter is left in the 
hands of the men themselves, who will evaluate with the finest 
distinctions and utmost care the work upon which they will 
have to adjudicate. It will be each man's care to see that he 
himself is not underpaid, nor his fellow-workers overpaid, and 
the conflict of opinion and free discussion will result in a fair 
valuation. 

It has already been remarked that some men can, as a 
matter of mere strength, work longer than others, and that, 
with a true regard to economy, such inequalities should be 



236 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

taken into consideration. There are other limits besides that 
of simple endurance which may well deserve attention. Under 
the present system of fixed hours the labourer is unable to 
choose his own holidays, to shorten his time in case of indis- 
position, to attend to other passing duties, or, in short, to dis- 
pose of his own time like a free man. Beyond giving notice, 
or running the risk of getting the sack, his liberty is of the 
scantiest. It is undeniable that at certain times, such as the 
gardening or haymaking season, it would suit some artisans to 
quit their daily toil and to change their employment. It would 
pay them better, and it would do them good in body and mind. 
So again, those whose wives keep lodging-houses sometimes 
might well dispose of their time in helping at home ; but such 
a thing is out of the question under the present rigorous system. 
When the hands are the guardians of the work-time, when 
each sees that his fellows are paid according to the work they 
do, not according to the time they spend, nor even according 
to the efforts they put forth, it will be easy and practicable to 
allow of a freer and more independent arrangement as to hours 
of work than is possible at present. Each man would mark 
down on the board, in the presence of his comrades, or their 
appointed delegate, the time of his entrance and the time of 
his departure, and his aptitude being well known and recognised, 
his due pay would be reckoned at once. 

Thus we have a glimpse of flourishing companies of work- 
people, all partners from the highest to the lowest, from the 
employer who supplies the capital to the smallest boy that 
sweeps the floor. Each is working for his own direct benefit, 
and not merely to increase his employer's profits, and each works 
as hard as he can and keeps an eye on the industry of his 
comrades. Paid in a lump they save the employer the trouble 
and expense of distributing their wages. What overlookers or 
managers of departments are needed for organising purposes 
they elect from their own number, so that efficiency and popu- 
larity will be secured at once, and at a reasonable and fair 
share by way of remuneration. 

In time even the head manager wiU come to be similarly 
elected, for the men will not tolerate the frittering away of 
their profits by an incompetent management. 



vii LABOUR CAPITALISATION 237 

Even the capitalist employer, unless himself risen from the 
ranks, or otherwise well qualified to manage, will perceive the 
expediency of leaving the management of the concern in the 
hands of his workpeople, who will elect the most competent 
head in his place ; for he may rest assured that his capital is 
safe in the keeping of those whose whole livelihood depends 
upon its preservation and increase. Here, with all the ad- 
vantages — such as they are — of co-operative companies of 
working men, or rather with all the supposed, or anticipated, or 
theoretical advantages of such companies, we have an ample 
supply of all kinds of capital : of land, buildings, machinery, 
fuel, raw material, and hard money. Though not their own 
property — the scraping together of their own small earnings — 
as in existing co-operative manufactories, yet they exercise the 
fullest control over it, harassed by no meddlesome or speculat- 
ing employer. 

The great flaw in existing systems of co-operative produc- 
tion is, as I have pointed out, the hopeless attempt to divorce 
labour from other forms of capital ready to hand. It seems to 
be part of the creed of " co-operators " that capitalists have not 
in reality any claim to profits, and yet they inconsistently aim 
at making those who co-operate into capitalists themselves. 
Past failures of these attempts may nearly always be ascribed 
to the fact that the " hives " have been capital starved. Even 
recent promoters of those institutions, who accept the help of 
rich capitalists, do so rather grudgingly, and as though forced 
to implore help, rather than on terms of businesslike equality. 
This is to swing to the opposite extreme. Capitalists have as 
much right to the whole fruits of their capital as manual 
workers have to the whole fruits of their labour. The two 
rights rest on the same principle. 

Mr. Morris has drawn some fascinating pictures of the 
factory as it ougM to be. If he would devote some of the same 
ability to a picture of the factory as it will be when we have 
emerged from this transitional period of wagedom into that of 
industrial freedom, the work would certainly be not less valu- 
able. Fact is often not only stranger but infinitely more 
beautiful than fiction. 

I have said that the workers of England, or at least a large 



238 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

section of them, are ready to embark on the system of the 
future. If not, let them consider their present position. They 
have had ample and bitter experience of " business principles." 
Do they really believe that the workman gets the whole fruits 
of his labour under existing arrangements ? Do they really 
suppose that their salaries or wages can be guaranteed without 
something like a heavy discount being charged by the guarantor ? 
Do they actually believe that he runs all their risk for nothing ? 
Is he in other respects so generous and self-denying ? Let it 
then be reiterated that it is the fault of the labourers them- 
selves if they allow this sort of patronage to be accorded them. 
Are they incapable of taking care of their own pounds, shillings, 
and pence, that their fair incomes must be doled out by the 
week, and taken care of by a guardian ? Let them assume the 
toga virilis. It is high time to sever the apron-strings and 
to proclaim the freedom of the working classes. But it will 
not be done for them ; it must be done by them. Let them 
cease to agitate for State regulation of work hours, for bank 
holidays, for high minimum of wages, for State emigration, for 
this, that, and the other restriction on their liberty. Let them 
throw off the shackles of wagedom, and the rest will follow to 
the full ! And so farewell to the much-harassed employer of 
labour. The elected manager, raised from the ranks, will take 
his place as superintendent ; and in nine cases out of ten will 
occupy it far more competently. The workpeople will take 
care of their own earnings, and the capitalist of non-human 
capital will be relegated to his right province, and become 
the recipient of profits varying with the risk of his invest- 
ments. 

The effect produced by the new system in the course 
of time upon the social standing of those who work with their 
hands will be of the nature of a revolution. Being one of the 
more indirect consequences, it is perhaps somewhat dif&cult of 
explanation. 

Time was when bankers were goldsmiths, and goldsmiths 
were common folk to be cuffed and kicked by gentlemen, to 
cringe and flatter and be useful. Between the days of Shylock 
and the days of the Kothschilds much has happened. Again, 
the civil engineer of to-day was in old times a kind of master 



VII LABOUR CAPITALISATION 239 

navvy. He helped to dig, to wheel, and to carry. Engineering 
now ranks with the learned professions, so that bankers and 
engineers, as such, are socially held to be in no way inferior, 
setting aside the separate question of titles of distinction, to any 
in the land. A master carpenter still continues to work with 
his hands along with his workpeople. A master builder seems 
at present to stand in an intermediate position ; showing that 
there are graduated stages in the social standing of the trades 
and professions from that of a sweep to that of a Lord Chief- 
Justice. Amongst actual manual workers this is at first sight 
less obvious. Yet when we compare a working watch- 
maker or a compositor with a navvy or chimney-sweep we 
see that there are well-marked degrees of social elevation 
among them. 

A working man under the present regime is said to have 
raised himself when he has accumulated enough to retire from 
his handiwork, to become a master or an idler. One can 
hardly picture a gentleman going down daily to his forge and 
his anvil and hammering away all day at the glowing iron. 
Even a poor gentleman must do work of the scribbling order. 
The pen, and not the hammer or the spade, must be his tool, 
even though the pay be less, the atmosphere unwholesome, the 
work distasteful, and the hours longer. How many poor 
curates, needy tutors, pallid clerks, and sub-editors have been 
heard to envy the lot of the rubicund Hodge, whose outdoor 
work, with pay almost equal to their own, seems like a con- 
tinuous holiday. But it cannot be ; there is a rigidity in 
custom which cannot be overcome. The question now presents 
itself. Why cannot true gentlemen become blacksmiths, 
carpenters, glass-blowers, potters, house -decorators, etc. etc.? 
and why cannot, or why should not, the blacksmiths and 
carpenters become gentlemen ? Why should the son of 
a barrister, who has made a fortune at the bar, follow in his 
father's shoes, and this, too, with pride, while the son of a man 
who has made money as a labourer, or even in most trades, is 
ashamed of his origin, and does his best to succeed at some 
more dignified occupation ? 

The reason usually alleged is that it always has been, and 
still is, regarded as servile to work with the hands ; that in the 



240 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

olden times the dominant classes were of the military order, 
and the tilling of the soil and manufacture of goods were 
performed exclusively by the despised classes. But granting 
the survival of the sentiment, though in point of fact it is 
almost extinct, it yet fails to account for certain exceptional 
cases which throw much light on the subject. The first is the 
case of painters and sculptors and other workers in fine art, 
whose labour is manual ; and the second is the case of 
engineers and bankers above alluded to, whose occupations have 
soared above the region of contempt. The explanation is 
simple. It is not the accident of its being manual that renders 
work undignified. Artists have always been held in esteem. 
Nor is it the historical associations ; for banking was surpassed by 
no other branch of industry in meanness of origin and the abject 
circumstances of its early history. At the bottom of the whole 
matter lies the ineradicable admiration for intellectual power 
which is inherent in human nature, whether that power be 
manifested in military genius, in forensic skill, in inventive 
talent, in philosophic insight, or in artistic subtlety. Any one 
with a hale body can dig and wheel, but only a Lesseps can 
carry out a canal across the Suez isthmus. Any one with eye- 
sight can paint a housefront or a deal box, but only a Millais 
the portrait of Gladstone in the Academy Exhibition of 1879. 
Any Hebrew usurer can lend money at sixty per cent to needy 
gentlemen with expectations, but only the man of a rare com- 
bination of talents can borrow at a low rate of interest, invest 
discreetly, and found a bank of stability and repute. The very 
poorest quality of human nature can be moulded pretty quickly 
into a mason capable of chipping stone evenly and in an average 
manner, but it is not every mason who has it in him to be a 
William of Wykeham or a Pugin. Ordinary mortals are fit to 
do the correspondence of a mercantile firm, but those who can 
write a Hamlet or a Locksley Hall take their seats among the 
gods. 

!N"ow therefore if this is the true rendering, it is asked, is 
there no room in wrought-iron workmanship for a blacksmith 
to exercise his imagination and his powers of artistic manipula- 
tion ? What of those beautiful gates in the Kensington 
Museum ? Does ancient pottery support the belief that there 



VII LABOUR CAPITALISATION 241 

is no room for the exercise of the higher powers in the manu- 
facture of earthenware ? How is it we never find any evidence 
of the labour of love among the carvings over our gateways, 
among our tables and chairs, among our carpets, our books (their 
bindings, that is to say), our garden railings or walls, our cups 
and saucers — anywhere ? 

The answer is summed up in a single word, wagedom. The 
builders of our old abbeys were not wage receivers. Upon 
each minutest portion of the work there is the impress 
of an individual mind. The carvings, the frescoes, the stained- 
glass designs, the mosaics, everything down to the little 
conceits in oak-work as seen in Ely Cathedral, recall an age 
when art was not sold by the yard. In these degenerate days 
(and it is no falsification of history to style them degenerate 
in this respect) all our decoration is worked out at the least 
expenditure of force by the soulless and indifferent worker. 
I^Tor is there any expression of individuality ; there is a regula- 
tion pattern and all the designs are as if run in the same mould. 
This has been pointed out so frequently before, and with such 
force and ability by John Euskin and others, that it is only 
necessary to mention it in order to call to mind the cause to 
which it is usually attributed. We are told that it is the 
introduction of machinery which has thus swept all the poetry 
out of our surroundings ; that a machine having no soul can 
infuse no true art into its productions. But this is fallacious 
and sophistical. As well say that a painter must paint without 
a brush ; for behind every machine there is a thinking mind. 
Besides, what do we find where there is no machine ? Pre- 
cisely the same monotonous heartlessness. In the industrial 
arts there is a certain dead level of dulness and apathy. The 
art is all in the design and none in the execution. The artisan 
lavishes no last loving touches on his handiwork ere it leaves 
his affectionate care, as the workers in fine art do. The ex- 
planation is wagedom. 

Let us now take a glimpse into the future : Here is a firm 
of iron-workers. The hands are self-elected and autonomous. 
The company has made a name, and the returns are high and 
increasing. A jplace in the factory is a vested interest. The 
original 20 per cent paid to the workpeople's president still 

R 



242 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

remains 20 per cent, but the returns have quadrupled, and 
with them the 20 per cent. It is difficult to be elected 
a workman in such a concern. When a vacancy occurs, 
mindful of the reputation of the firm for fine workman- 
ship, merit is the qualification for election — artistic talent 
in iron-work design or skill in execution (as the case may 
be) combined with a good character. The mere fact of working 
in this foundry is amongst metal-workers equivalent to the 
much -coveted membership of the Eoyal Academy in the 
present English world of fine art. So with the other in- 
dustrial arts. Let the quality of workmanship once rise 
above the dead level of wage work, and competition will soon 
accomplish the rest. 

And, as has been already observed, the true key to the 
respect and homage of our fellow-men is power. It is not the 
horny hand that degrades the labourer, it is the absence of 
any need for intellectual power in his calling ; it is the fact 
that his profession is open to all, too difficult for none. It is 
merely a matter of drudgery. Efficiency is a question not of 
ability, of genius, but of time and industry. 

An artist has the status of a gentleman. He is sought 
after and honoured, be he rough or smooth in his manners. A 
house-painter may or may not be a gentleman, probably not ; 
but most certainly he has not the status of one, by reason of 
his class. When house-painters shall be true artists, they will 
be gentlemen. In the distant future the elite of the land 
(strange as it may seem) will include blacksmiths and 
carpenters ; not the masters and employers of many hands, 
but the 'bond-fide hammerman himself. There is nothing in 
all this of the morbid fraterniU of the Frenchman. It is only 
a following up of the lines of history in order to " dip into the 
future far as human eye can see," and form a juster estimate of 
the workman's destiny than can be arrived at by any other 
route. 

But the whole question of the indirect effects of the new 
system on art and on society is too wide for present treatment. 
Perhaps it would have been more prudent to have passed over 
in silence these indirect effects of the introduction of a logical 
system of labour payment, as tending to derogate from the 



VII LABOUR CAPITALISATION 243 

practical character of the proposal advocated. But to those 
who do not care to peer too far down the vistas of the future, 
it is quite competent to confine their attention entirely to the 
more immediate and direct effects, treating the remoter conse- 
quences as too problematical for practical consideration. Those 
who anticipate great social changes must, however, guard 
themselves against misunderstanding. It is not to be expected 
that all branches of handicraft will simultaneously rise in status ; 
that gentlefolk will flock into all the now-despised occupations. 
The duke and his younger brother the chimney-sweep will 
never walk arm-in-arm in Pall Mall. It will be with labour 
as it has been with trade. Some branches will outstrip the 
rest. Some will come to the front as handicrafts of honour, 
just as engineering and banking have done in trade. Those 
departments which have in them the most room for intellectual 
or artistic cultivation will leave the rest behind ; and those 
which have least will never rise into a higher social stratum 
at all. Blacksmith and butcher will not visit. 

Serfdom, Wagedom, Freedom — these are the three stages 
in the evolution of Industrialism. To-day we are still mostly 
in the second stage. At one end of the labour ladder we have 
the agricultural labourer striving to throw off the last vestiges 
of serfdom, demanding higher fixed wages in lieu of a low wage, 
increased by gratuities and perquisites. At the other end we 
have workers in the coal and iron trades demanding wages 
varying with employer's profits. The first represents the 
transition (now nearly completed in this country) from serfdom 
to wagedom ; the second, the transition from wagedom to 
freedom. Thus we find that the same progress is not made 
all along the line, for we have one wing ready to advance into 
the third stage of development before the other wing is well 
out of the first. We must keep our eye on the advanced 
guard if we would learn the direction the campaign is likely 
to take. 

We are frequently met with the objection that the present 
system is perfect because it is based on free contract ; that 
employer and employed freely bargain together as to the work 
to be done and the wage to be paid ; and that if a workman 
does not like the terms offered, he is under no compulsion to 



244 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

accept them. But what is the history of contract ? Do not 
contracts themselves tend to become modified in course of 
time ? I think nomological analysis will show us that they 
tend to be modified in three distinct ways. They tend to 
become : first, more and more free ; second, more and more 
definite ; third, more and more simplex. 

Without going into the vexed question as to where direct 
compulsion ends and indirect compulsion begins — whether, for 
instance, the traveller who voluntarily hands over his purse to 
the highwayman in exchange for his life does it in pursuance 
of free contract with the robber — it will be admitted that the 
relations subsisting between master and wage earner are freer 
than those subsisting between lord and serf. The change from 
serfdom to wagedom was a change in the direction oi freedom 
of contract. I will not demand an answer to the question 
whether a labourer who has the choice between subsistence 
wages and starvation is altogether a free agent, because this 
again raises a deeper question, into which we need not go 
here. But it will hardly be denied that the man who agrees to 
receive the full value of the work he actually does, instead of 
so much an hour for the time he stands over his work on the 
tacit understanding that he will apply himself with average 
diligence, has at all events entered into a more definite 
contract. 

But it is in respect of the third tendency of contracts — to 
become more and more simplex or separate — that the system 
of capitalisation will show itself especially conformable. 
Instead of containing a bundle of distinguishable engagements, 
contracts tend to become fewer and fewer, and eventually the 
fewest possible. In this respect we may compare the fasciculus 
of heterogeneous duties undertaken by domestic servants, most 
of them rather tacitly understood than expressed, with the 
comparatively simplex duties of a factory operative. The 
contract entered into by the free worker will be even less 
complex. He will agree with his fellow-workers to put labour 
into the crucible and to take out a share of the proceeds in 
proportion to what he put in. The capitalist, again, who 
contributes non- human capital, will cease to insure a fixed 
return to his labouring partners. He also will take out of the 



VII LABOUR CAPITALISATION 245 

crucible a share proportionate to the value of what he put into 
it. In fine, the history of industrialism illustrates the three- 
fold tendency of contracts towards increasing freedom, definite- 
ness, and simplicity. 

It may have occurred to some that all the advantages 
of the new system would be more than neutralised by the 
great and manifold inconveniences arising out. of the 
partnership questions which would be eternally springing up 
between masters and their partners, the men. Many forms 
of robbery would cease to be felonious in the eye of the 
law, and, moreover, men and masters would be mutually 
liable for one another's debts in connection with the business. 
Besides, it may be said that a partnership of more than some 
twenty persons must by law be registered as a joint- stock 
company, which would necessitate the application of the Joint- 
Stock Companies Acts to every large manufactory. 

It is not proposed in this place to enter into a criticism of 
the existing law of partnership in this or other countries. 
Suffice it to observe that the law is not slow to adapt itself 
to new institutions and customs, though it is not likely to take 
the initiative. Moreover, a careful analysis of the juridical 
idea of partnership reveals a definition of the term which is 
not the definition received in authorised legal treatises, or even 
in the law courts. To state the matter briefly and dogmatically, 
the essence of partnership is not the sharing of profit and loss, 
or either or both, whether alone or in conjunction with other 
conditions ; it is simply guaranty. That persons who trade in 
common, sharing profits and losses, do as a rule guarantee each 
other so far as the debts of the firm are concerned, even though 
that rule may have no exception, is no reason for confounding 
essentials and accidentals, but it is a very simple explanation 
of the existing confusion. Even now, the tendency in the courts 
is in the direction of recognising only those partnerships which 
have been openly admitted by the parties, instead of arguing 
from community of profit and loss. And no doubt when 
working men have established their undoubted claim to such 
community of profit and loss, some way will be discovered of 
escaping from all the difficulties and inconveniences inseparable 
from the present muddled notions of mutual liabilities. The 



246 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

only question is, whether the present disgraceful state of the 
law with respect to joint-stock companies will not bring the 
old definition of partnership into contempt, before the correct 
interpretation has been forced upon the Legislature by the 
independent action of the labouring classes. Meantime, there 
is no cause for misgiving on account of the effect of the law of 
partnership on the working of the system. 

I suppose that no measures of legislative interference have 
been so mischievous and so costly to the country (not even 
excepting the Factory Acts) as the Acts relating to joint-stock 
companies. It would be impossible to estimate in hundreds 
of millions the enormous quantity of wealth which has been 
diverted from productive channels by these contemptible Acts 
alone. Designed, doubtless, as safeguards for the innocent and 
simple, they have served as snares and traps, of which the 
cunning and unscrupulous have taken ample advantage. 
Perfect freedom, untrammelled private enterprise, would long 
ere this have rendered joint-stock adventure as safe on the 
average as the 3 per cents, instead of which capital has 
been scared off and found an outlet in foreign loans, Egyptian, 
Peruvian, Turkish, Spanish, and the like. 

If the return to the lines of individualism in trade, which 
the capitalisation of labour will render necessary, were to be 
the only result of the introduction of that system, the country 
would even then be amply rewarded. Not only will a vastly 
larger proportion of wealth be devoted to production, bringing 
in larger incomes to those who invest in trade instead of 
Government and foreign stocks, but, owing to increased 
security, investors will be content with smaller profits on 
the turnover, made up for by quicker returns ; so that 
although the gross outcome of industry will be larger, and 
although the total receipts of the contributors of non-human 
capital will also be larger, yet the average reward of risk 
will be less, and consequently the ratio ■ of risk reward to 
labour reward will be a constantly diminishing one. The 
working classes will receive a larger share of a larger whole. 
While all will benefit, they will gain the most. And what 
is quite as important, the inequalities in the distribution 
of wealth (though inequalities must always exist, corresponding 



VII LABOUR CAPITALISATION 247 

to the inequalities in human nature) will be less glaring and 
more evenly graduated from top to bottom. The income 
curve, which is a sure test of social stability, will, in mathe- 
matical language, tend to approach more and more nearly to 
a right line. 

A few words as to the morality of wagedom. The term 
fraud is extremely difficult to define. For our present purpose 
it may serve to distinguish between two classes of bargain, in 
both of which the knowledge of the facts possessed by one of 
the contracting parties is deficient ; but in the one case, owing 
to false representations knowingly made by one party, and in 
the other case, owing to any other cause. The first may be 
called a fraudulent bargain, but not the second. 

Consider the following illustration of the second case : 
You make the acquaintance of your groom's nephew, a poor 
lad living in an obscure part of the town. You, having a 
good knowledge of drawing and painting, find his chalk 
sketches on the stable walls full of merit and genius, while 
they are unappreciated by the grooms and stable-boys. Esti- 
mating their marketable value, you engage to buy all the lad's 
productions on paper at a price which, though remunerative to 
him, is altogether disproportionate to their true worth, and 
you pocket the difference. Your advantage is gained without 
the use of brute force, without the use of stealth, without the 
use of fraud. Thus in every sense of the phrase it is a 
voluntary contract. Yet from a moral point of view, higher 
than that from which modern society expects us to regard 
these matters, is there not an element of unfairness in the 
arrangement ? Do we not feel that the lad ought to have all 
the proceeds of the sale of his drawings ? 

Surely this sentiment may be examined as a sign of a 
future restriction (no matter how sanctioned) upon the use of 
superior knowledge. Why should not this higher form of 
intellectual superiority follow the lower forms which have 
already been disallowed ? Why should it not follow fraud as 
fraud followed stealth, and as stealth followed brute force ? 
When this shall happen, if ever, the profits of an undertaking 
will be distributed exactly according to the value of the 
original contribution of each contributor, whether it consist of 



248 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

inorganic or organic material, of hand labour, of superinten- 
dence, of foresight, or of any other ingredient. That is to say, 
profits will be divided in proportion to the new increment of 
value imparted by each contributor. At present there are two 
sources of gain in business. The one consists in increasing 
the value of purchased commodities while in possession of 
them, and afterwards selling them at that increased value. 
The other consists in buying an article at less than its real 
value, or in selling it at more than its real value, or in both, 
without in any way adding to its value. Is it not conceivable 
that the manufacturers and traders of the future will discard 
the second mode of gain ? 

This mode of obtaining advantage over those ignorant of 
the facts is most clearly exemplified in the case of bargains 
made between the employer and employed, that is to say, 
between the wage -paying and wage -receiving classes. In the 
absence of open books it is clearly impossible for the work- 
people to ascertain how much of the profit obtained in the 
business is due to their exertions and how much to the capital 
in conjunction with which they labour. Taking advantage of 
their ignorance, the master is in a position to contract with 
them so as to compound for their services at a valuation which 
is necessarily below their true value. 

When the manual labourer is deprived by force of the 
fair portion of profit due to his labour, we have a system of 
slavery or serfdom. Compulsion is necessary in order to 
make the workman toil. When he is deprived of his fair 
rights by concealment of fact, whether by fraud or by mere 
suppression of the truth, or in any way by which he is kept 
in ignorance of his real worth, his labour may be said to be 
compounded for, and we have a system of wagedom. When, 
again, the ascertained value of his contribution in the form of 
work is the measure of his remuneration, he may be said to 
labour freely and openly in the full light of knowledge, and we 
have a system of freedom. 

There may be nothing illegal in bargaining with an 
individual, or with whole classes of the population, to pay any 
sum which he or they will accept for their work ; but illegal 
or not, it is surely immoral. It would be immoral to demand 



VII LABOUR CAPITALISATION 249 

a large sum of money from a drowning man as a condition of 
helping him into your boat. It would be a voluntary bargain. 
He would gain by promising any sum whatever, but surely it 
would be an unfair bargain. So it is with a hungry popula- 
tion a most unfair and immoral practice to pay them one 
penny less than the true value of their labour. 

There is no intention in this place of confounding morals 
with law. How far a man may be legally justified in palming 
off upon another an article for more than it is actually worth ; 
how far, that is to say, the law should deal with such 
transactions at all, is a juridical question which in no way 
affects the ethical one. Caveat emptor may be an excellent 
legal maxim without in any way conferring a moral justification 
on such dealings. It is all very well to say that every man 
must look after himself, that superior knowledge ought to have 
its reward, and so forth ; but, notwithstanding, there remains 
the feeling (it may be mere sentiment) that there is something 
mean, something morally wrong in such transactions, that a 
stigma attaches to them. But then it ceases to be immoral so 
far as employers are concerned when the workers are awake 
to the true position and continue to insist upon the arrange- 
ment. 

The question may be asked. How can we expect employers 
to enter into a fair contract with their workpeople ? Is there 
no balance to redress ? Is not the employer compelled to 
guarantee the workman against accidents, by the Employers' 
Liability Act ? to educate his children, by the Education 
Acts ? to provide for his unfortunate relations, by the Poor 
Law ? to carry him by rail at under cost price, by the Cheap 
Trains Act ? to supply him with water at less than cost of 
delivery ? to provide him with books, baths, wash-houses, 
parks, picture galleries, etc. etc. ? and finally to lodge him at 
a dead loss ? All this may be very good and humane. 
Perhaps not to do it would be cruelty. Besides, it would 
not pay to let the " proletariat " starve ! But why will 
the workers of England persist in claiming to be treated 
like first - class slaves ? Even if they obtained all they 
asked (which is impossible), what would it profit them 
without freedom ? 



250 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

Again, whether we blame the employer or not, we must 
admit that if the wage earner does not realise his position it is 
mostly his own fault. Might not the employer argue thus ? — 
"If I were to sell myself to a sugar -planter for a thousand 
dollars, to invest the money for the benefit of my children, and 
then to pass into perpetual bondage, all of my own free will, 
would you call the planter a tyrant and a villain, or would 
you call me a fool, and add — serve you right ? Well, that is 
exactly what the wage -receiving classes of this country are 
doing to-day, and if they do not like the arrangement they have 
no one to blame for it but themselves, and this insensate howl 
against capitalists is an unmanly attempt to lay the blame on 
to the shoulders of any but those who are really responsible 
for the situation. A man cannot in this country sell himself 
out and out, but he can let himself out for hire like an ox or 
an ass, at so much a day or a week, and this is just what he 
does. To let one's self out for hire is the same thing as to 
sell one's services for a limited period out and out. To turn 
round and complain after this transaction that the employer 
pockets the whole of the net profits of the work is childish 
and contemptible. You might as well sell a man your pig and 
then complain that he sold it again for a profit without offering 
you a share. I say it is an unworthy wail." 

There is something in this plea. Just so long as popula- 
tion goes on increasing at a greater rate than the means of 
subsistence, and men and women go on letting themselves out 
for hire instead of working for their own hand, so long will the 
rate of wages equal on the average the cost of keeping the 
human machine in fair working order, and no more. 

There is no doubt the working classes have one excellent 
reason for preferring to remain under the system of wagedom 
rather than to enter upon a regime of freedom. Under the 
present system they have no care or trouble for the future ; 
they are guaranteed so much by the employer. Come sun, 
come storm, it is all the same to them. It is the capitalist's 
look-out ; why need they bother themselves ? This is the 
happy-go-lucky irresponsible life which some of them truly 
prefer. They would not for the world alter it if they could. 
On the contrary, even the wage system is a little too 



VII LABOUR CAPITALISATION 251 

responsible ; the golden age for the labourer, we are told, was 
in the glorious days of serfdom when, come what might, the 
serf was well cared for by his lord. There is a pleasing 
English ring about this : to be well cared for, fattened up, and 
kept in good condition like an ox is a truly noble ambition, 
and yet Mr. Hyndman and his friends tell us to look back to 
the fourteenth century for a picture of a happy and prosperous 
people, for what we ought, if possible, to bring back. " ! 
the happy days of serfdom, the freedom from care, the jolly 
irresponsibility." A lofty refrain truly. But were these serfs 
so happy and comfortable after all ? The merry England of 
the good old times is mostly immortalised, I imagine, in the 
traditions of knights and barons, while the opinions of the 
villeins and the cottiers of those days were not much noticed 
or committed to writing. Here is one genuine working man's 
view of his position, many centuries old, and now preserved in 
the British Museum : — 

" ' What sayest thou, Plowman ? How dost thou thy work ? ' — ' Oh, 
my lord, hard do I work. I go out at daybreak driving the oxen to field, 
and I yoke them to the plough. Nor is it ever so hard winter that 
I dare loiter at home for fear of my lord ; but, the oxen yoked and the 
ploughshare and coulter fastened to the plough, every day must I plough 
a full acre or more.' — ' Hast thou any fellow ? ' — ' I have a boy driving 
the oxen with an iron goad, who also is hoarse with cold and shouting. 
Verily, then, I do more. I must fill the bin of the oxen with hay, and 
water them, and carry out the dung. Ah me ! hard work it is, hard 
work it is, because I am not free! " ^ 

I suppose this sentiment is hardly intelligible to some 
modern ears. Their ambition is not to be free, it is to be fat ; 
we have had enough freedom. It is even the fashion nowa- 
days to run it down. It is quite a common thing to hear men 
denouncing what they contemptuously call your vaunted 
freedom of contract. Doubtless bitter experience of such 
freedom as wagedom brings is calculated to lower very con- 
siderably the fervour with which an appeal to the love of 
liberty is received. That is but natural. And yet the 
immorality of wagedom is probably exemplified, more than in 

1 Quoted from Seebohm's English Village Communities, a work which 
should be read twice by those who wish to understand the land question, and 
once by those who do not. 



252 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF lOLITICS chap, vii 

anything else, in the waning self-respect of our working classes, 
as witnessed by their slavish appeals for aid and alms from the 
very classes whom they persistently abuse, and in their lack of 
enterprise and self-reliance. And the ranks of those who 
decry freedom and applaud those who would confer the same 
favours on the deserving and the undeserving — who would 
apportion satisfaction not according to efforts but according to 
needs — are swelled by those whose real aim is not equal 
opportunities of work, but equal opportunities of gain, of 
support and luxury at the expense of their more industrious 
and capable fellow-citizens. But be it clearly understood that 
capitalisation has nothing to offer to the lazy, the dissolute, 
the criminal, and the vagabond classes. Under such a system 
(there is no use blinking matters) these classes will go to the 
wall, and the sooner the better. For them there is nothing 
but pity and good advice. Socialism has many good things 
to offer to these classes, and I for one have no hesitation in 
advising them to embrace that fascinating doctrine with all 
speed. There are but these alternatives for them : either work 
and individualism, or socialism and idleness. 

But whatever conclusion we arrive at as to the morality 
of the existing system of labour payment, with respect to 
employers or employed, there can be little room for doubt that 
a nation which tolerates a distribution of wealth so glaringly 
disproportionate to intelligent individual effort as the present 
system entails is guilty of a national sin. On this one point 
at least socialists and individualists can agree. Something 
must be done, and done quickly, to rectify the anomaly, and 
the question of the day is. What ? Socialism says. Smash up 
the existing social fabric and start a new one. Individualism 
says, No ; first try the effect of liberty — more liberty. 



CHAPTEK YIII 

A WOED FOE ANAECHY^ 

I SUPPOSE that most of us enjoy a whitebait dinner without pausing to 
reflect that scores of lives are sacrificed in order to provide us with a 
single dish. Yet have not these tiny animals an equal right to life with 
ourselves ? What peculiar virtue does human nature possess that the 
happiness and freedom of fellow-creatures should be ruthlessly sacrificed 
for the transient gratification of man ? The usual answer to this question is 
an amused smile, or " Yes, it does seem odd, doesn't it *? " ; but when the 
converse question is asked in another direction, namely, Why on earth 
should the strong and the clever refrain from making themselves comfort- 
able at the expense of the weak and dull ? an outcry is at once raised 
about the equal rights of men. Why men ? To theologians, no doubt, 
the phrase conveys a clear idea ; but to an evolutionist who cannot admit 
the existence of any distinct line of demarcation between man and his 
ancestors, the puzzle is to find out when those equal rights arose. I can 
quite understand men drawing the line at men ; it is natural ; but what 
I cannot understand is how they deduce the doctrine from the principle 
of Eternal Justice. If the greatest happiness of the greatest number 
(whatever that may mean) is the true guiding principle of conduct, what 
have the whitebait done that their happiness should be left out of account 1 
But perhaps it is argued that the pleasure derived by the gourmet from 
the dinner is greater than the total pleasures of life possible to such 

1 This chapter was originally read before the Fabian Society, consisting chiefly 
of socialists, revolutionary anarchists, and other very advanced political thinkers. 
It was intended partly as an answer to those State socialists who attack indi- 
vidualism as necessarily ending in anarchy ; partly as a reductio ad ahsurdum of 
the teachings of those revolutionists who would break up existing institutions, 
in the belief that a better order could be erected on their ruins. I reprint it here 
(though in smaller type) without the slightest alteration, because I believe that it 
meets a difl&culty which may already have occurred to readers of the foregoing 
chapters. The extreme doctrine here enunciated will be found duly qualified in 
the chapter which follows. Should any critic open the book at this place, I have 
only to ask that he will read it in the light of this explanation. 



254 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

humbly organised sentient beings as whitebait. Then there is an end 
of the virtue in numbers. 

To apply these reflections to the political questions of the day, we 
may cordially accept the maxim Vox 'po'puli^ vox Dei, and yet deny 
that the voice of the people is necessarily the howl of the greatest number ! 
If ten fools knock me down, tie my hands behind me, and otherwise 
work their will upon me, I bow to their superior force — brute force. I 
conform to their wishes rather than take the consequences of disobedience. 
But I claim no virtue in so doing. I have the choice of evils, and I take 
the less. Similarly, if the majority of persons in this or any other 
country can enforce their will upon the numerically fewer, by all means 
let them do so. I may have my doubts as to their ability, but I certainly 
do not for a moment dispute their right. I should as soon think of 
disputing the right of the wild cat to the bird he has caught. The very 
notion is absurd. 

But if, on the other hand, the numerical majority cannot succeed in 
enforcing their will upon the minority, by what argument are the 
stronger, though they happen to be also the fewer, to be induced to 
forego the advantage of their superior strength for the benefit of others, 
who have nothing particular to recommend them except that they swarm 
like whitebait ? 

That the effective majority (not necessarily the numerical majority) 
will have its own way, may be laid down as a truism. Thus the question 
of interest for us is not whether numbers have the right to rule, but 
whether the numerical majority is likely to become the effective majority 
as society evolves. 

After which the further question must be met, whether, assuming 
that the tendency discernible throughout history is democratic, mankind 
is to be congratulated on the fact or not. 

In a multitude of counsellors there is wisdom. Very likely ; but it 
is on the principle of the survival of the fittest. Certainly it is not true 
of the result obtained by taking the opinion of the majority. If all the 
clowns in Europe had gathered together they would never have hit on 
the theory of gravitation as an explanation of the movements of the 
heavenly bodies. One man did what a million men could not do. Is 
then the science of sociology so much simpler than that of mechanics ? 
Bather the reverse. Repetition of incredible nonsense can never make 
sense, though it sometimes produces conviction. Neither can the mere 
multiplication of folly convert it into wisdom. 

Somebody says that the land of England would, if properly cultivated, 
support a hundred and forty millions of people. What of it^ Gui 
hono ? One would suppose that the end and aim of the race was to 
consist of as many units as possible, irrespective of their quality. I feel 
disposed to describe this as the Daniel Lambert view of the salus ^opuli. 
What would be thought of an individual man who set before himself as 
the goal of his ambition, the aim of his life, to attain to the greatest 
possible weight or size 1 Possibly the land would support a thousand 
times that number of flies, if we all agreed to cut our throats ; and what 



VIII A WORD FOR ANARCHY 255 

a gain that would be. And again I ask, Why Man ? He is an ugly 
beast at best, taking the majority for a pattern (as in democratic duty 
bound), something, thought Carlyle, like a split carrot. And if he does 
happen to be distinguished from his fellow animals by his ability to lie 
and get drunk, what then ? Of course that or any other peculiarity 
justifies him in appropriating to his own use the wealth of nature, if lie 
can, but not otherwise. Meantime the particular species which has got 
hold of the land at present is similarly justified in sticking to it as long 
as possible. In the days to come when the land shall fall into the hands 
of the Daniel Lambert school, whose views of the solus populi is ever 
increasing numbers, we may yet see a hundred and forty millions of 
human beings swarming over the surface of the country ; a veritable Age 
Saturnian — or shall we say Saturnine? What a field for the district 
visitor and the missionary ! What happy hunting grounds for the quack 
with his patent pills ! Fortunately this golden age still lies in the dim 
and distant future. 

How far does the will of the numerical majority represent the will of 
the people ? Doubtless those who are ready to accept the ipse dixit of 
the Catholic Church in matters theological ; those who are prepared to 
swallow the dicta of Mrs. Grundy on matters social ; all such may logic- 
ally take as inspired the utterance of the myriad-mouthed. But trite as 
the observation is, it cannot be too often repeated, that throughout all 
history, truth, liberty, and justice have been advocated by the few and 
opposed by the many. It is true, remarkable changes sometimes take 
place in the characters of men, and the same may hold good of societies 
and classes. If so, it is possible that the many, who poisoned Socrates, 
who crucified Jesus, who burnt Bruno, and who but recently betrayed 
Gordon, may suddenly be converted like King Hal into defenders of the 
true faith. Let us hope so.- 

After these prefatory remarks, I may now proclaim myself an uncom- 
promising democrat ; but by democracy I mean not the government of 
the many as opposed to that of the few, but the government of all. 

If I have to choose between the government of the many and that of 
the few, I do not hesitate to choose the latter ! I have too firm a faith in 
the selfishness of human nature to expect altruism from either ; but I 
know that my own interests would be better attended to, or at any rate 
less impeded, by the selfish rule of culture than by the equally selfish 
rule of ignorance. 

I confess to complete scepticism as to the overlauded virtue and in- 
telligence of the self-styled proletariat. (By the way, if I or any one else 
had dubbed them with that contemptuous title what an uproar there 
would have been. I have no wish to quarrel with the term, if it is 
popular ; and it certainly does connote a remarkable if not the most in- 
teresting attribute of the impecunious strata of society.) The question I 
ask myself, with the selfishness common to humanity, is this. Where do I 
come in ? On the lists of the few I fear my name would not appear ; 
therefore I am against the rule of the few. The many would not admit 
me among them because they are a well-defined class, having, as they sup- 



256 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

pose, interests diverse from the rest of the community, by reason of the 
peculiar nature and system of their work ; therefore I am against the rule 
of the many. But in a government of all I may be able to make my 
voice heard and my will counted for something ; therefore I am for the 
government of the people by the people — not some of the people, be they 
many or few, but all the people. 

" What's everybody's business is nobody's business." So it is said. 
If so, then the government of all by all would be tantamount in the end 
to the government of the country by nobody, which thing is anarchy. 
And not a bad thing either. In my opinion a people which should begin 
de novo with complete anarchy would not get far wrong. In reply 
to that it is usually urged that too much liberty is as bad as too little, if 
not worse. It involves the liberty of the wolf to devour the lamb, and 
the equal liberty of the lamb to devour the wolf ; a mutual liberty to 
which somehow the lamb objects. But is this really a valid objection ? 
I doubt it. What happens in such cases ? Voluntary associations spring 
into existence for mutual protection against the brute force of powerful 
individuals. And if these prove beneficial to the people adopting them, 
they tend to become coextensive with the whole population. In other 
words, under a truly anarchic system, we should have exactly what we 
have now, a police system to which by hypothesis no one could effectively 
object. There would, however, be this difference ; the unwilling would 
not be coerced into joining the association or helping to maintain the 
system. And why should they ? A man who thinks himself strong 
enough to meet all probable risks and dangers from the violence of fellow- 
men may justly consider himself hardly treated if he is compelled to 
maintain a force for the protection of those who are too weak or too 
quarrelsome to care to run that risk. Again, one who has all his property 
in a strong house surrounded with a moat and practically unassailable 
may reasonably object to have to contribute to the protection of the pro- 
perty of those whose treasures are lying about at the mercy of the ill- 
disposed. So, one who has no property to lose may rebel against being 
compelled to join an association for the mutual defence of property. 

The difference between Anarchy and the present system is just the 
difference between Voluntary Co-operation and Compulsory Co-operation, 
— between Individualism and Socialism. The history of civilisation is 
the story of the transition of society from a socialistic to an anarchic state. 
The prevalent notion of anarchy which precludes the combination of in- 
dividuals for a common end is of course a ridiculous one. To suppose 
that under an anarchic system, a strong man would be allowed to cut up 
a weak one in the market-place while others looked on, is of course a 
caricature of the regime. Voluntary association would practically effect 
what the State does now in all that is necessary, and therefore good ; 
whereas it would not interfere, as the State does now, in matters which 
are better left to private management. The cardinal error of Socialism 
seems to be that combination is regarded as useless unless everybody can 
be brought into it. Trade unionism is good ; but the black side of its 
history is that which describes the miserable bullying to which non- 



VIII A WORD FOR ANARCHY 257 

unionists have been subjected. Leave those who will not join out in the 
cold. If the bond of union is good, sooner or later most will be drawn in. 
But if bad, then no matter what amount of coercion is used, the cause 
will fail and the combination collapse. 

It is a mistake to suppose that anarchy is lawless. Nothing of the 
kind ; in fact lawlessness amongst intelligent persons is almost unthink- 
able. Where there is no ruling body, where there is no governmental 
authority, as in San Francisco within the memory of many of us, what 
happens % Did the marauders and pests of society carry all before them ? 
Not a bit of it : those who had inherited the habits of a social and 
methodical mode of life, owing to its greater average economy, banded 
themselves together and straightway lynched those who were desirous of 
violating the principles of order and method which centuries of experience 
have shown to be conducive to the possible existence on a given area of 
a considerable population in a superior state of comfort. Of course the 
orderly were not going to submit to the disorderly without a struggle ; 
and being the stronger party, though possibly composed of the weaker 
individuals, they voluntarily combined, and shoved the refractory element 
to the wall. This was anarchy. 

We have now reached this position : that I and those who think with 
me are democrats because we expect some good from democracy. And 
what is that good ? Why nothing more nor less than our liberty. We 
support democracy because it leads straight to anarchy. For the greater 
the number of persons with a voice in the affairs of the nation, the more 
d^_fficult will it become to carry coercive measures. Each one of us may 
be willing and anxious to coerce our neighbours in all manner of concerns, 
but we shall most surely find ourselves in a minority on some question of 
supreme importance to ourselves ; and then we shall begin to realise how 
coercion loses its charm when we are ourselves among the coerced. There- 
fore the larger the nuimber of diverse interests represented in Parliament 
the nigher is the advent of true anarchy. 

Anarchy ! The word has a dreadful ring about it. Why, it is 
opposed to property ; so it is urged. Not at all. The maxim of the 
anarchist is, " Let him take who hath the power ; let him keep who can." 
That is property is it not? "But what is to prevent the strong from 
robbiiig the weak ? Suppose the many, finding themselves poor, take it 
into their heads to expropriate the few, what then ?" Why not ? If it 
can be shown that the robbery of the rich can be effected, and effected 
with advantage to the poor, I cannot see for the life of me why it should 
not be done. It is contrary to morality ? But unfortunately, high-falutin 
abstractions " butter no parsnips." Besides I deny it. Morality is co- 
extensive with self-interest. If anybody disputes that, he is wrong. It 
is rude and dogmatic of me to say so ; but it is a short answer, and I am 
not going to discuss the first principles of ethics here. I repeat emphati- 
cally, if the poor and many can see their way to dispossessing the rich 
and few, and to reap advantage from the process, then they have a right 
and a duty to do it. 

But now arise the two previous questions : Can they do it ? And 



258 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap, viii 

would it be to their advantage to do it if they could ? To the first I 
answer without hesitation, No ; if they could, they would have done it 
long ago ; for I believe they are no better, take them all round, than my- 
self, in spite of the glowing colours in which it pleases modern candi- 
dates for parliamentary honours to paint them. I was once told by an 
Oriental who knew nothing of the British workman but what he had 
read of him in political speeches, that when he first came to this country 
he expected to see the "masses" winged and feathered. 

But surely the many, if they will but organise and stand together, can 
overcome the few ? No ; the man who cannot overcome the temptation to a 
glass of grog when his wife and children have to pay for it with their 
dinner, is not the man to refuse the gold of the rich to stab his fellow- 
worker in the back. They cannot do it ; it is a physical impossibility. 
Or, not to put it too strongly, it is any odds against them. They may 
boil over in an incoherent way for a few short weeks or months, as indeed 
they have done once or twice in the world's history ; but the ebullition 
is merely temporary, and what is more significant, there are always 
members of another class behind, making use of them for sinister purposes 
of their own. 

But now supposing they could effect this object — supposing the many 
could dispossess the few — would it be a wise course to adopt, even for the 
poor themselves ? To this question I again reply. No, certainly not. It 
is useless for me to recapitulate here all the whole chain of reasoning 
which goes to show that if the spur to industry were once removed, in- 
dustry would cease, and I should be one of the first to strike. The con- 
sequences would be that it would be necessary to take stock of our exist- 
ing wealth, and see how long it would last at a universally comfortable 
scale of living. The total value of all the wealth of Great Britain at the 
present moment, including the value of the whole population at slave 
prices, is just about thirty thousand million pounds. That gives us some- 
thing like a thousand pounds apiece, or forty pounds a year on the con- 
dition of working like niggers. Forty pounds a year on condition of 
good honest work ! But would that work be done ? Who would do it ? 
Not I. Why should I work ten hours a day for my neighbour to fool 
away his time in the adjoining public ? It would soon become passing 
clear, either that we must prepare for a short life and a merry one (say 
about two years' jollification), or else we must discover some method of 
inducing people to work. The best method that I could bethink myself 
of, if my opinion were asked, would be the system of private property. 
To every man the fruits of his labour. If this view were adopted, a state 
of things would arise exactly like what we have now, with this one point 
of unlikeness — that confidence would have been diminished, interest 
would be higher, credit harder, wages lower. The many cannot oust the 
few ; and if they could, they had best not. 



CHAPTEE IX 



THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUALISM 



The chain of economic reasoning, of which the first few links 
were wrought a hundred years ago by Adam Smith, leads us 
irresistibly to two main conclusions from which there seems to 
be no appeal. The first of these is the law of wages, as 
formulated by Eicardo, and which in the hands of Ferdinand 
Lassalle becomes the " iron law of wages " (a phrase of ominous 
connotation). The second is the doctrine of laissez-faire, as 
taught by Bastiat and the Manchester school — a doctrine 
which in practice involves the minimisation of State inter- 
ference. 

Between these two issues there is theoretically no an- 
tagonism whatever ; but it is more than difficult to realise the 
existence of a democracy based on the eternal serfdom of the 
great majority of the citizens — the so-called working classes. 
Hence it is necessary to subject both these doctrines to a 
searching re-examination. The immediate object of the present 
chapter is to dissect the arguments underlying the doctrine of 
absolute individualism as set forth by its ablest exponents, and 
notably by Mr. Herbert Spender, who, in The Man v. the State, 
has gathered into a focus all that is to be found scattered 
throughout his works bearing on the subject. The principles 
of personal liberty therein enunciated have been carried to 
their extreme expression by certain of Mr. Spencer's disciples, 
notably Mr. Auberon Herbert, with a thoroughness and a 
temerity equalled only by that of the English successors of 
Lassalle and Marx in their exposition of the creed of 
socialism. 



26o INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

But Mr. Spencer himself does not descend to details, and 
in meeting him it is not sufficient to point to the results of 
applying his principles to the concrete ; it is necessary to meet 
him on ground which he has himself chosen, and to test his 
own conclusions by his own methods. 

Mr. Spencer begins with the dogmatic assertion that " the 
great political superstition of the past was the divine right of 
kings." He continues : " The great political superstition of 
the present is the divine right of parliaments. The oil of 
anointing seems unawares to have dripped from the head of 
the one on to the heads of the many, and given sacredness to 
them also and to their decrees." Whatever interpretation our 
fathers may have placed on the earlier doctrine, otherwise 
expressed in the maxim " The king can do no wrong," it is 
certain that there is no general acceptance of the later doctrine 
in the literal sense. Indeed Mr. Spencer himself admits this 
by redefining the political superstition in a form less open to 
misconstruction, as the belief that Government power is subject 
to no restraint. 

Now, in one sense this is not a superstition, but a solid 
truth. That the group — society regarded as an organism — 
can through the effective majority (not necessarily the greatest 
number) do whatever it chooses, so far as the resistance of 
the minority is concerned, is a stubborn fact, whether it 
attains its ends through the medium of a despotism or through 
that of a representative Parliament elected by universal or any 
other suffrage. In another sense it is not true ; but then 
neither is it a superstition, for no one believes it. That the 
group cannot act incompatibly with its own welfare is of 
course untrue. So says Austin ; the writings of Bentham 
imply it ; so do those of Hobbes. ]^o one disputes it co-day 
— not even the most extreme socialist. 

The question at issue between Mr. Spencer and his op- 
ponents is simply this, Have minorities, in the sense of the 
weaker party, any rights which are valid against the com- 
munity ? The answer depends upon the definition of the 
term " rights." If we accept the practical and intelligible 
definition of Austin, the question stands thus. Are there any 
claims for the defence of which the minority can successfully 



IX THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUALISM 261 

appeal to the group or State against the superior force of the 
effective majority ? Considering that the will of the group is 
known only through the act of the effective majority, the 
question resolves into an absurdity. And if the " rights " of 
the minority means the power to appeal successfully to a 
higher tribunal than the group itself, the answer must again 
be in the negative, for to admit the existence of such superior 
authority is to deny the existence of the group itself as an 
independent State. 

But does Mr. Spencer mean to say that the opinion of the 
larger number should sometimes give way to that of the 
smaller — that even the effective majority should sometimes 
defer to the wishes of the weaker party, and that this not only 
conduces to the welfare of the group, but is constantly done ? 
In that case no one denies the proposition. Every party 
compromise testifies to the fact. To say that there is a moral 
law or a code of indefinite moral laws by which groups regu- 
late their conduct, is simply to say that the conduct of 
societies is not arbitrary, which is obvious. But to contend 
that the State, when it has once made up its mind rightly or 
wrongly to act in such or such a way, is subject to restraints, 
is to say that which has no meaning. The group-will, once 
made up, necessarily manifests itself in action, and it is no 
more subject to restraints from within than is the will of a 
single human being. So that the proposition which Mr. 
Spencer regards as the great superstition turns out to be a 
great undeniable truth, or an absurdity believed by none. In 
neither case can it be called a superstition. 

What is the element of untruth contained in the theory of 
a social pact as the foundation and justification of government ? 
It is not the mere fact that no such gathering and agreement 
ever took place, for even Eousseau only regarded it as a tacit 
contract ; and writers of a very different school have based 
the duty of obedience to the law on the ground that all 
members of a community have tacitly and virtually agreed to be 
bound by the laws. This then is not the element of untruth 
contained in the hypothesis, or rather formula. It is that the 
formula does not represent the fact. The group-will is not 
the sum of the wills of the individuals composing it ; the two 



262 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

are incommensurable. Supposing that we knew the wish of 
every man living at the imaginary date of the contrat social, 
we should be utterly unable to predict the will of the group. 
It is not even the resultant of the wills of the units, but the 
resultant of those and many other forces acting in many other 
directions. It is the neglect of this fact, or rather ignorance 
of it, which vitiates all the social philosophy of those who 
build upon the foundation of a real or hypothetical social 
compact. Hobbes, Eousseau, and Bentham, and after them 
Mr. Spencer, commit the error of confounding the group-will 
with the sum of the wills of the units — an error pardonable 
enough in the first three. The following startling passage 
furnishes the key to the chain of strange sophistry which goes 
to make up the essay entitled " The great Political Supersti- 
tion," and which is happily so unfamiliar to readers of Mr. 
Spencer's works. After admitting the indefensibility of the 
assumption that, in order to escape the evil of chronic conflict, 
the members of a community enter into a pact or covenant by 
which they all bind themselves to surrender their primitive 
freedom of action, and subordinate themselves to the will of a 
ruling power agreed upon — after deriding the hypothesis and 
its authors in language neither generous nor just, Mr. Spencer 
proceeds to present his own alternative hypothesis. 

" Further consideration reveals a solution of the difficulty ; 
for, if dismissing all thought of any hypothetical agreement to 
co-operate, heretofore made, we ask what would be the agree- 
ment into which citizens would now enter with practical 
unanimity, we get a sufficiently clear justification for the rule 
of the majority inside a certain sphere, but not outside that 
sphere." 

So that, after all, the outcome of Mr. Spencer's criticism of 
Hobbes and Austin results in the substitution of a hypothetical 
social compact made to-day for a hypothetical social compact 
made a long time ago. Of the two, that of Hobbes is prefer- 
able. His supposition is considerably more intelligible than 
Mr. Spencer's solution. That at an indefinitely remote period 
wild people, hitherto living in a state of anarchy, came together, 
hit upon the plan of co-operation, and there and then agreed to 
conform to the will of the effective majority, may not be a 



IX THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUALISM 263 

historical fact ; but nevertheless it is a fact that somehow men 
formerly in a state of anarchy did come little by little to sub- 
ordinate their wills to that of the effective majority, consciously 
or u.nconsciously ; in other words, the supremacy of the State 
came to be recognised as a fact. What men come to do, they 
may be said in a sense to agree to do. And if Hobbes had 
expressed his pact in terms to the effect that men agreed to 
abide by the decision of the effective majority — the State -will 
— he would have been very near the mark. The social com- 
pact and the divine right of kings or of parKaments are after all 
merely two ways of expressing a stubborn fact — namely, the 
fact that right is transfigured might. 

But Mr. Spencer's social compact is a sort of chronic 
plebiscitum. The justification for each new Act of Parliament 
is to be found by the process of wondering what would be the 
result if the people were polled. This is of course the " refer- 
endum." Carried out in practice instead of imagination its 
effect is to make every citizen a legislator in spite of the 
admitted fact that " there can be no fitness for legislative func- 
tions without wide knowledge of those legislative experiences 
which the past has bequeathed." 

But perhaps Mr. Spencer would not go the length of taking 
a poll of the people in order to justify each new piece of pro- 
posed legislation. He would rather work the question out on 
paper ; he would ask himself — not the people — whether they 
would " agree to co-operate for the teaching of religion ? " and 
he would answer himself with " a very emphatic No." " In 
like manner, if " (to take an actual question of the day) " people 
were polled to ascertain whether, in respect of the beverages 
they drank, they would accept the decision of the greater 
number, certainly half, and probably more than half, would be 
unwilling." ISTow this is just what local-optionists deny. It 
is just what many others want to know. Mr. Spencer settles 
it offhand by intuition. But why should the majority be un- 
willing to abide by the decision of the majority ? Is it that 
the majority has no confidence in its own judgment or rectitude ? 
The self-regard of majorities is usually considered unimpeach- 
able. But the strangest feature in this intuition is its 
marvellous precision. " Certainly half," he says, " and probably 



264 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

more than half/' would be -unwilling. Surely, if we may be 
certain of fifteen millions out of thirty, we might venture to be 
certain of fifteen millions and one. This recalls the scrupulous- 
ness of the American gentleman who solemnly swore to having 
brought down ninety-nine pigeons at a shot, but refused to 
imperil his immortal soul by setting the figure at a hundred. 

" Manifestly then," says Mr. Spencer, " had social co-opera- 
tion to be commenced by ourselves, and had its purposes to 
be specified before consent to co-operate could be obtained, 
there would be large parts of human conduct in respect of 
which co-operation would be declined, and in respect of which, 
consequently, no authority by the majority over the minority 
could be rightfully exercised." 

This extraordinary passage and the superstructure built 
upon it are so unpractical, so unreal, and so visionary, that the 
conclusion can hardly be resisted that the whole essay contain- 
ing it and developing it has been exhumed from a half-forgotten 
heap of the author's early writings, and published without re- 
examination. It must be obvious to Mr. Spencer and to every- 
body else that in the main those would agree to co-operate who 
believed their own views on the question at issue to be in a 
majority. Others would of course decline. 

Nor does the prospect brighten when we come to the 
converse question, For what ends would men agree to co- 
operate ? To which the ready answer is, " None will deny that 
for resisting invasion the agreement would be practically 
unanimous." Indeed ! Many will deny it most emphatically. 
Besides, supposing that only one person held aloof, would the 
rest be justified in coercing that one to co-operate ? If so, on 
what principle ? Mr. Spencer himself excepts the Quakers, 
whom, however, he dismisses with a compliment and annihilation. 
" Excepting the Quakers only, who having done highly useful 
work in their time, are now dying out, all would unite for 
defensive war — not however for offensive war." This must be 
another of those intuitions which only a poll of the people can 
verify or disprove. It is at least as probable that a majority 
would vote the other way. Much would depend on the defini- 
tion given to " invasion " and " defensive." Nearly every 
civihsed nation that has gone to war in the present century has 



IX THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUALISM 265 

believed itself to be acting on the defensive. Onlookers might 
be able to inform the belligerents in the Franco-German war 
of 1870 as to which of them was waging a defensive war, but 
both sides distinctly claimed that justification. More recently, 
M. "i^erry justified the operations in Ton-king on the ground 
that the French were acting on the defensive ! Again, as to 
rebellions, were the English on the defensive when they 
ineffectually endeavoured to suppress the Boer rising ? Were 
they on the defensive a century ago, when they successfully 
suppressed the Irish rising ? Were the British the other day 
defending Egypt against the threatened invasion of the dervishes, 
or were the Soudanese fighting in defence of hearth and home ? 
Then again as to the term " invasion," those modern English- 
men (or rather dwellers in England) who are smitten with the 
insular craze may define "invasion," so far as they themselves 
are concerned, as the entry of a foreign force m et armis 
upon the soil of England, Scotland, and Wales — and perhaps 
Ireland. Whether a German occupation of Heligoland, a 
Spanish seizure of Gibraltar, or an Italian attack on Malta 
would fall within the definition, only the late lamented Anti- 
Aggression League can say. It would be even more interesting 
to know whether a Eussian advance upon India would fall 
within the category of invasions which Mr. Spencer would him- 
self co-operate to repel, and at what point in the onward march 
the invasion might be said to begin. Putting aside the 
question of British frontiers, as exceptionally simple or excep- 
tionally complicated, according as we take an insular or an 
imperial view of them, let us ask whether a French occupation 
of Alsace would be an invasion of Germany in the above 
sense ? 

But why should " invasion " be construed as territorial inva- 
sion only ? May not British interests and rights be invaded 
which are not territorial ? Was not the tearing up of the Treaty 
of Paris by Eussia in 1 8 7 an invasion of England in the wider 
sense of the term ? England, at great cost of blood and treasure, 
had obtained a certain negative right in the Black Sea — a cer- 
tain safeguard against a definite danger. May not the German 
occupation of Angra Pepuena similarly be described as an 
invasion of British interests ? The district had for many years 



266 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

been treated as the property of Englishmen, and under the 
protection of England ; it is contiguous to regions in which 
Englishmen almost alone are interested ; and the conflict of 
jurisdiction in those regions is calculated to injure trade to the 
detriment of the English people. Is it an invasion ? 

Further, we are not told whether there would be any 
limit to the subordination of individuals to the State in those 
matters in which they, " with practical unanimity," " almost 
unanimously," " omitting criminals," " excepting Quakers," agreed 
to co-operate. Take the agreement to co-operate for defensive 
war, and suppose that means something definite. Would the 
citizens thereby bind themselves to conform to the will of the 
majority in respect of measures directed to that end — all 
measures ? Might not a citizen be willing to contribute money 
towards the expenses of the war without being willing to sub- 
mit to conscription ? Might he not accept conscription with 
power of substitution without being willing to serve ? Or, 
assuming in the face of a growing party of sincere socialists 
that, "omitting criminals, all must wish to have person and 
property adequately protected," is it equally certain that all 
would be willing to accept the decision of the majority in 
respect of the measures needful for that end ? And what is 
" property " ? Mr. Spencer glides over this as a phantom ship 
might glide over sunken rocks. Surely people will not 
agree to protect property until they know what it is they are 
pledging themselves to protect. A thief steals a watch, and sells 
it to a lond-fide purchaser for its full value. Whose property 
is it that the State has to protect ? A journeyman tailor agrees 
to make a quantity of army clothing out of cloth supplied to 
him by a cloth merchant, who before delivery fails for ten times 
the amount of his assets. Whose property is the clothing ? 
Of course it is not difiicult to say what would be a fair way of 
treating the claims of the different parties, or what is the exist- 
ing law here and elsewhere ; but the question is. Whose is the 
property ? Whose is the property in a row of houses built by 
a lessee under a ninety-nine years' lease ? Or in the case of 
" emphyteusis " under the Eoman law ? Or in a chest of gold 
coins dug up by a labourer in a field occupied by one man, 
owned by another, mortgaged to a third, and sold to a fourth 



IX THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUALISM 267 

under the Settled Estates Act — and before completion of con- 
veyance ? 

It is when we come to the land question that we find 
ourselves involved in the most inextricable maze. " In one 
other co-operation all are interested — use of the territory 
they inhabit." What territory does any individual inhabit, or 
any determinate number of individuals ? Or, if indeterminate, 
do the English people inhabit Ireland or India ? Do Lon- 
doners inhabit Yorkshire ? In what sense is it true that one 
is more interested in one's neighbour's field than in his cattle ? 
The one supplies corn, the other beef. " But," it is urged, " we 
must have some security for the food of the people. If 
landowners conspired to grow no corn, the people would starve, 
and such a state of things cannot be tolerated even as a bare 
possibility." Likewise, if the owners of cattle conspired to 
destroy them, the people would have no beef. If capitalists 
conspired to smash up all machinery, rails, ships, tools, 
furnaces, and mills in the country, the nation would be ruined 
and the people destroyed. In short, if the race went mad, it 
would possibly commit suicide. Practically landowners, like 
capitalists in general, having interests coincident with those of 
the whole people, refrain as a class from exercising their rights 
to the detriment of society, and they are never likely to do so. 
" But we must have room to move about ; in this respect land 
is sui generis ; man is material, and space is essential to his 
existence, and if all space in sea and earth and air is 
appropriated {cujus est solum, ejus est usque ad ccelurn) those 
who own no space are in danger of being elbowed out of 
existence." Quite so: then would it not be as well to find 
out what kind of "use" it is which the public are vitally 
interested in, and whether it is correctly described as a " use " 
at all ? What kind of power the State does as a fact tend to 
reserve to itself, while recognising the proprietary rights of 
individuals, is ascertained more readily by a reference to the 
land laws and customs of all countries, than by a guess as to 
what a majority of the people in its wisdom would in this or 
any other country agree to do. In all civilised countries we 
find that as a fact the State dispossesses the proprietor whenever 
such dispossession is expedient in the general interest. We 



268 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

have railway concessions, new roads are made and new streets 
cut through congested districts, without any more concern for 
intervening proprietary claims than is involved in allowing full 
compensation — that is, such compensation as satisfies the 
national conscience. But what is Mr. Spencer's practical 
conclusion from the premises that all are interested in the use 
of the territory they inhabit ? " The implication is," says he, 
" that the will of the majority is valid respecting the modes in 
which, and conditions under which, parts of the surface or sub- 
surface may be utilised, involving certain agreements made on 
behalf of the public with private persons and companies." It 
would take too long in this place to analyse in nomological 
terms this remarkably opaque utterance. To some it might 
seem to have been drafted in order to fit in with whatever 
view of the land question should eventually turn out to be 
correct. Others might be pardoned for regarding it as a pillar 
of cloud for the purpose of veiling the transition from the 
writer's doctrine of land nationalisation, as set forth in 
Social Statics (and since repudiated), to the later doctrine of 
individualism as advocated in Political Institutions. To me it 
appears as an arrangement of words neither having any 
particular meaning nor intended to have any. 

At this point, in order to disarm criticism apparently, we 
are reminded that " details are not needful here." Why not ? 
In other places Mr. Spencer is most painstaking himself, and 
most exacting in his demands upon others, as to attention to 
details. " Nor is it needful," he continues, " to discuss that 
border region lying between these classes of cases " — that 
border region which, as Mill pointed out, is of all regions the 
most fruitful in supplying crucial tests and essential differences. 

" It is sufficient," we are told, " to recognise the undeniable 
truth that there are numerous kinds of actions in respect of 
which men would not, if they were asked, agree with anything 
like unanimity to be bound by the will of the majority ; while 
there are some kinds of actions in respect of which they would 
unanimously agree to be thus bound. Here then we find a 
definite warrant for enforcing the will of the majority within 
certain limits, and a definite warrant for denying the authority 
of its will beyond those limits." 



IX THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUALISM 269 

To which the reply is that, if it is sufficient for the 
philosopher to recognise the said " undeniable truth," it is 
certainly not sufficient for the statesman, who wants to know 
not only that there are numerous kinds of such actions, but 
also what those kinds of actions are ; and he will not (if he 
be wise) rest content with the i^pse dixit of any one who 
evolves the answer out of his own inner consciousness ; and 
furthermore, he may not feel satisfied that the mere process of 
counting noses, even in imagination, will solve the question as 
to the morality of such actions. 

From the position here taken up by Mr. Spencer it is but 
a short and easy step to " abstract rights." After a brief and, 
as it will seem to most, in every way unsatisfactory analysis 
of the " untenable " opinion of Bentham and his disciples, we 
are led straight back to what modern jurists fondly hoped was 
the exploded doctrine of natural rights ; " for sundry groups of 
social phenomena unite to prove that this doctrine is well 
warranted, and the doctrine they set against it unwarranted." 
We are then told that various savage races are controlled 
by "long -acknowledged customs," by "ancient usages," by 
" primordial usages or tacit conventions," by " universally- 
recognised customs." " So sacred are immemorial customs 
with the primitive man, that he never dreams of questioning 
their authority, and when government arises, its power is 
limited by them." Now, premising that no one denies, or ever 
did deny, that State laws grew out of customs (they must have 
grown out of something), what are we to infer from this long 
string of social phenomena, many of which, being gleanings 
from travellers' tales, are open to doubt, while others are false on 
the face of them ? Are we seriously asked to believe that the 
quaint and often ludicrous customs of savages are themselves 
the germs of the laws by which natural rights are sanctioned ? 
Are we to understand that when Government arises, its power 
is limited by them in any other sense than that in which the 
will of a man is limited by his own desires and habits ? If 
so, how ? 

The truth is, Mr. Spencer is confounding three distinct 
classes of so-called rights: the rights which he himself would 
sanction if he were the arbitrator; the rights which the 



270 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

claimant's fellow -citizens would individually recognise as 
morally just; and the rights which are as a matter of fact 
actually sanctioned by the law of the land. The first may be 
called " natural rights," or rights as they ought to be in the 
opinion of their advocate ; the second may be called moral 
rights, or rights as they would be under a code of laws 
deduced from the morals of the day ; and the third may be 
called legal rights, or rights which are as a fact recognised by 
the State, and which are a natural development. 

It is perfectly true that, as the leaders of the German 
school of jurists assert, the State laws which are actually 
carried out are not in all cases and in all respects identical 
with the State laws as they are expressed, whether embodied 
in a code or in a heterogeneous heap of statutes, or in 
authorised or received commentaries on the law. The 
invariable sequences which actually tend to hold good at any 
given time in any country, may be called the statical laws or 
internal group -morals of that particular State at that stage of 
its development. The laws as expressed are necessarily but 
imperfect and often distorted reflections of these true laws, the 
distortion being due not only to imperfect expression and 
inadequacy of language but more especially to the false 
generalisation of legislators or law -makers of one sort or 
another. Now, it is approximately the former class, the 
statical laws, which the German school style " Naturrecht." 
There is another sense in which the term may be used, and 
that is, to denote the law as it tends to be but for disturbing 
causes ; or, assuming those disturbing causes to be more or less 
evanescent, the laws as they tend to become. In neither of 
these senses is there any resemblance to the natural rights 
championed by Mr. Spencer, who is of course aware that 
although " recht " may be translated by " droit " or " jus," it 
cannot be translated into English by the term "right" or 
" rights " or any other single word ; and furthermore, that 
although " recht " and " droit " are fairly synonymous, " jN'atur- 
recht," on the other hand, cannot be rendered into French as 
" droit naturel." Mr. Spencer's " natural rights " are the 
" droit naturel " of Eousseau, the " jus naturale " of Ulpian, the 
" inalienable right of every man born into the world " of Mr. 



IX THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUALISM 271 

Henry George ; but not the " Naturrecht " of Savigny. So 
that the appeal to the "root -idea of German jurisprudence" 
(which is, above all, historical in method) to shore up the 
justly discredited card-castle of " natural rights," is, to say the 
least of it, unfortunate. 

Mr. Spencer does not usually allow himself to be a slave 
to words, but his singular criticism of Hobbes's explanation of 
the origin of justice seems to show that for once he has fallen 
into this condition. " The definition of injustice," says Hobbes, 
" is none other than the not performing of covenants " (including 
the tacit compact entered into by the members of a society, 
upon which Government, according to him, is based) ; " there- 
fore, before the names of just and unjust can have place, there 
must be some coercive power to compel men equally to the 
performance of their covenants." 

Hence it is clear that by "injustice" Hobbes meant to 
denote the breach of legal duties. Ignoring this definition, 
Mr. Spencer substitutes his own, and naively remarks that 
among his own friends he could name half a dozen over whom 
the requirements of justice would be as imperative in the 
absence of a coercive power as in its presence. Possibly ! 
The majority of Mr. Spencer's friends will hardly feel flattered 
by the limitation. But the question is. Could Mr. Spencer 
find half a dozen friends so law-abiding that they would obey 
the law even against their conscience without the terror of 
some punishment ? 

The truth is, Mr. Spencer is himself under the blinding 
influence of a great superstition — a superstition he has out- 
lived in other departments of thought. He still believes in 
abstract justice, as something anterior to society or even to 
man — something immutable and absolute. He still holds, as 
he held in 1851, that the elimination of the mentally and 
morally inferior is in accordance with " the decrees of a large 
far-seeing benevolence." He has since emancipated himself 
from the anthropomorphic belief involved, and declines to be 
held " committed to such teleological implications " as the 
passage cited contains ; but, to use his own illustration, just as 
" Carlyle, who, in his student days, giving up, as he thought, 
the creed of his fathers, rejected its shell only, keeping the 



272 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

contents/' so his own mind is still under the sway of the 
metaphysical abstraction Justice. The laws, to have any 
validity (whatever that means), must conform to this test. 
He regards the laws solely as a means to an end, rather than 
as the products of evolution, the resultant of diverse forces 
acting in various directions through countless ages. His stand- 
point in viewing State laws is precisely that of Dr. Paley 
viewing the marvellous adaptations of organic forms t^ their 
surroundings. A giraffe with a short neck, argued Paley, 
would assuredly perish of starvation ; hence his long neck is 
evidence of the far-seeing benevolence of his Creator. Honesty 
is the best policy, argues Mr. Spencer ; the just tend to survive 
and the -unjust to perish ; hence the sufficient cause of good 
laws in Justice. Is it not remarkable that Hobbes, writing 
more than two centuries ago, should have examined nomo- 
logical phenomena in a more positive spirit than the great 
philosopher of the nineteenth century ? Hobbes argued, there 
are certain classes of actions which tend to conduce to the well- 
being of society. Experience has taughu us what in the 
concrete these are; they are detailed in the expressed laws. 
We find by induction they may be classified under certain 
heads in accordance with certain practical middle principles ; 
there is no general principle under which they can all be 
subsumed; but their common trait appears to be conformity 
with the group-welfare. Let us denote them by the term Just. 
The connotation of the term we cannot tell. This is not the lan- 
guage of Hobbes's day, but it describes with fairness the method 
he adopted. He then inquired what it could be which counter- 
acted the antagonistic efforts of individuals actuated not by 
group-welfare but by self- welfare ; and he saw that it was 
none other than the power of the State. He did not attempt 
to resolve that force into its elements in terms of individual 
force ; there it was as a fact. That was sufficient. He might 
have asked himself how far the State force represented the 
will of the greater number of men, women, and children in the 
society ; whether the will of a strong man went for more than 
that of a weak man ; of a rich than of a poor man ; of a clever 
than of a weak-minded man ; whether the wills of half a dozen 
children contributed as much to the State will as the will of 



IX THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUALISM 273 

one man or two women. But he was neither curious nor dog- 
matic on these points. The fact was there, and he accepted it 
as a datum. In his day he found that the channel through 
which this State force operated was that of monarchical govern- 
ment, and he lived to see the so-called republic develop into a 
monarchy in all but the name, and later still to see the old 
monarchy restored. It is absolutely misleading to say that 
" Hobbes argued in the interests of absolute monarchy ; " such 
an assertion is as unjust and as unfounded as would be the 
more plausible one that Mr. Spencer argues in the interests of 
the Liberal party. Hobbes was, and Mr. Spencer is, far above 
arguing in any interests. Hobbes was unquestionably the pro- 
foundest thinker of his age — the age of Shakespeare and Bacon ; 
and many Englishmen who cherish his name will bitterly 
resent this imputation. We have already referred to Mr. 
Spencer's sneer at Carlyle. Here is what he has to say of the 
founder of the English school of jurisprudence, probably the 
acutest logician of the century : " Austin was originally in the 
army, and it has been truly remarked that the permanent 
traces left may be seen in his Province of Jurisprudence. 
When undeterred by the exasperating pedantries — the endless 
distinctions and definitions and repetitions — which serve but 
to hide his essential doctrines, we ascertain what these are, it 
becomes manifest that he assimilates civil authority to military 
authority." It is difficult to deal patiently with this passage. 
It is useful as showing up in a strong light the fundamental 
error which underlies and vitiates the whole of Mr. Spencer's 
political doctrines ; an error he unconsciously adopted from his 
precursor Comte. That Austin was once in the army we 
know, but beyond this statement of fact, this criticism of the 
great jurist is as untrue as it is ungenerous. Those who 
attended Austin's lectures testify that, so far from having 
anything of the drill-sergeant about him, he was exceptionally 
modest and conversational in his method of teaching ; he would 
listen attentively to all doubts, and ask the opinions of his 
hearers on points where he felt himself weak. But if we are 
to look for the traces of his army discipline in his conclusions, 
it is only necessary to repeat that it is Mr. Spencer himself 
who, after Comte, mistakes for a difference in kind what 

T 



274 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

Austin clearly saw to be merely a difference in degree ; the 
difference, namely, between the "military and industrial 
regimes." As to exasperating pedantries, Austin himself 
attributes his own peculiarities of diction to a scrupulous 
anxiety to express each idea by a suitable word, and to use 
invariably that word to express the idea. His aim was to be 
not an elegant but a precise writer. From the expression 
" endless " distinctions, it may be inferred that the complainant 
has never got to the end of them ; those who have, only regret 
that poor Austin did not possess the health and strength to 
add to them, containing as they do some of the finest master- 
pieces of logical analysis. The repetitions which are a blemish 
on the published editions of his works are, as Mr. Spencer 
might have ascertained, the necessary result of delivering 
several lectures on the same subject to different audiences in 
different places ; and the able editors of his lectures and 
posthumous papers have probably acted wisely in publishing 
them as they stand. For it is seldom that science can be 
caught, so to speak, in a state of growth in a great mind, as it 
is presented to us in Austin's wrestling writings. While, as 
for the definitions that glitter like crystals throughout his 
works, and which so vex the soul of his critic, it is enough to say 
that an accurate acquaintance with even one of them (the 
wonderful definition of property) would have saved the author 
of The Man v. the State pages of useless writing, the whole of 
the fifteenth chapter of Political Institutions, and hours and 
days of anxious thought. There is nothing in the whole range 
of juristic literature comparable with Austin's final definition of 
property and the chain of masterly analysis which leads up to 
it. Mr. Spencer writes in complete ignorance of it. 

Austin and all his works having been thus contemptuously 
thrust aside, the search is continued for a justification of the 
supremacy assumed by the sovereign body, or, as it has been 
styled, the effective majority. " The true question is, Whence 
the sovereignty ? What is the assignable warrant for this 
unqualified supremacy assumed by one, or by a small number, 
or by a large number over the rest ?" Does any one really 
believe that any community is or ever was subject to the 
arbitrary caprice of one or of any determinate number of its 



IX THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUALISM 275 

members ? Does Mr. Spencer believe that this country is 
governed in accordance with the will of a numerical majority, 
or that any such government is even conceivable ? Is it not 
clear that the forms of individual force which go to make up 
the group-force are of very various kinds ? Possibly brute 
force or muscular force contributes the least to the result. 
Porce in the form of wealth, intellectual force, moral force, and 
many other and derivative and combined forms, pour into the 
common stream, all operating in countless directions, like the 
sensations and ideas and emotions in the mind of a man, and 
the resultant of these and other forces is the group-will. To 
ask for any higher warrant for the authority of the group over 
its units, is to rake up in a fresh place the threadbare contro- 
versy about freewill. "How comes it," asks the befogged 
controversialist, "that a man often refrains from doing what 
he wills to do ? that something within him at the last moment 
whispers ' Don't do it,' with the effect of dissuading him ? " 
Mr. Spencer would answer him, " My dear sir, go home and 
learn the meaning of the words you use," He certainly would 
not set about to think why the body does not move in the 
direction of least resistance, or why the lesser force should 
overcome the greater ; or if not, by what peculiar virtue or 
authority, or warrant, or justification, the greater overcomes 
the less. And yet when the subject of the inquiry is not the 
organism a human being, but the organism a society, he 
searches everywhere for "an assignable warrant," and bitterly 
complains that Austin while admitting that a government is 
actuated by group-morality furnishes none. " What we have 
to seek is some higher warrant for the subordination of the 
minority to the majority than that arising from inability to 
resist physical coercion." " We have to find, not a physical 
justification, but a moral justification for the supposed absolute 
power of the majority." But what is meant by the majority ? 
Does any one suppose that the numerical majority, as such, 
either exercises absolute power, or ought to exercise it ? All 
that Hobbes and Austin contend is, that what the group wills 
it does, and that those members of the community who happen 
to be in line with the group-act may be called the effective 
majority. No one pretends that any determinate person, or 



276 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

number of persons, ever did have or could have the making of 
the group-will. 

If Mr. Spencer will recast his question, and ask, "What 
is the test of the goodness or badness of group-acts ?" we can 
cordially join in the quest. Bentham's answer was simple : 
" The greatest happiness of the greatest number ; " but it was 
not true, and it was not definite. The greatest number of 
whom ? Of living persons ? or of the countless millions to 
come ? If of the former, it is far from certain that a socialistic 
redistribution of wealth, accompanied by wholesale infanticide, 
would not be the readiest path. If of the latter (assuming 
that the two interests may be antagonistic), then we have to 
ask, " Why should the living sacrifice themselves for the sake 
of the unborn ? " Sympathy with the unborn ? A frail motor ! 
Though Mr. Spencer evidently has faith in it. " If," says he, 
" we adopt the meliorist view " (not the optimist), " that life is 
on the way to become such that it will yield more pleasure 
than pain, then those actions by which life is maintained are 
justified." [tTot at all : no act is morally justified which does 
not conduce to the ultimate welfare of the agent. This is what 
Mr. Sidgwick would call Egoistic Hedonism, but it is also 
common sense. Evidently Bentham's answer is unsatisfactory 
in theory and utterly unworkable in practice. To expect the 
legislator to measure the million and one effects of a proposed 
law with his " hedonometer," to say nothing of the remote 
effects, is preposterous. What, then, is the test of which we 
are in search ? To any one who has once grasped the concep- 
tion of the group as an organism — as a whole not to be 
expressed in terms of its component parts, any more than a 
man can be expressed in terms of the cells of which he is 
composed — the answer is clear enough : the welfare of the 
group. This is the warrant, this the justification. 

When we seek for the motive of a law, we must not look 
for it in the minds of individuals conforming to that law. 
The motive is to be found in the group-mind. This is delicate 
ground. Group-psychology cannot be studied subjectively. 
The group-will can only be known objectively, by its acts. 
Hence we are not called upon to ascertain what the group 
may think of contemplated actions and their results ; we must 



IX THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUALISM 277 

assume that it approves those actions of which the results con- 
duce to the group-welfare. We have no other course ; but it 
is sufficient. Our conclusions in individual ethics are for the 
most part similarly based on observation of the results of 
conduct. 

We are not even bound to show that all the units of the 
group are benefited by the operation of the law ; nor that the 
majority of the individuals are benefited; nor that any of the 
individuals are benefited. It is true there are powerful forces 
tending to bring about coincidence between the will of states 
and the wills of their component units, but this may be 
regarded for the present purpose as accidental. Certainly 
there are laws, good laws, operating in civilised communities, 
of which the advantages to the citizens are undiscernible, if 
not altogether non-existent. Nor is it necessary even to prove 
that future generations will be benefited by the observance of 
the law in question, although it is difficult to show the gain to 
the race without at the same time showing that at all events 
some members of it share the gain individually. It is enough 
if we distinguish between the essential and the accidental. 

It is for us, after having observed the invariable sequence 
(the law), to verify it by showing its bearing on the group- 
welfare. That is the only proof open to us beyond the mere 
induction. And without deductive proof, inductions in so 
complex a science as sociology are extremely untrustworthy. 
Hence no science of law can be firmly based which does not 
furnish this verification. ^ And it is disregard of this branch of 
the science which is a blemish on the work of the historical 
school of jurisprudence. 

But we must not fall into the mistake of confounding the 
explanation of a law with the explanation of its origin. The 
cause of the origin of a nomological law and the cause of its 
persistence are two different things. Illustrations of this 
distinction in the department of biological study will readily 
recur to the mind. N"o moth every consciously tried to mimic 
a butterfly, and yet such is the result of conforming to their 
own little desires that whole species of moths have so com- 
pletely imitated certain species of butterflies that even the 
practised eye of the naturalist can hardly distinguish between 



278 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

them. And — what is more important from the moths' point of 
view — neither can the birds. 

We have then to look for the origin of justice (using the 
term, after Hobbes, as connoting that which is common to the 
enduring laws) in the conduct of individual men or animals 
which are not yet members of an organic group or state. Its 
germ or germs must be sought for in the anarchic stage 
of development. At the risk of repetition this should be 
clearly understood ; the group-welfare is not the origin of the 
laws, but it is the cause of their survival — of their present 
existence. The strong man who first deferred to the wish of 
a weak man was not actuated by solicitude for the wellbeing 
of his race. But it was the compatibility of such acts 
with the wellbeing of his race which preserved and rendered 
organic the habit of such acts. Tribes practising such acts 
predominated by elbowing other tribes out of existence, and by 
perpetuating a race of men actuated as a rule by like 
promptings, whatever they may have been. What those 
feelings were — why one of superior strength should form 
a habit of yielding in certain classes of cases to one who could 
not otherwise prevail against him, is the question we have now 
to answer. 

The result of our inquiry will prove somewhat startling. 
Justice has two distinct origins. Nay, they are not only 
distinct, but even antagonistic. Justice then has two connota- 
tions. In one sense, justice enjoins a certain line of conduct ; 
in another sense, justice enjoins an opposite line of conduct 
under precisely similar conditions. I^o wonder there has 
always been great confusion in this domain of thought. But 
let us set to work and trace the notion back to its double 
source. 

Those who have watched the behaviour of dogs will have 
observed that a strong dog will seldom attempt to deprive a 
weak dog of a bone. Though stronger, he hesitates to attack 
the dog in possession. A fortiori, a little dog will not dare to 
attack a big dog in possession, though he will put on all his 
best military airs before yielding up his own bone. In this 
instance there are two minds to dissect. There is the mental 
attitude of the little dog, and there is the mental attitude 



IX THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUALISM 279 

of the big dog. Action is the end of will, or, in other words, 
the resultant of motives. The strongest motive actuating the 
little dog is the idea of enjoying the bone in the very near 
future. This future is so near, and the associations engendered 
by the smell and feel of the bone so intensify this idea, that it 
borders on realisation, and we have what is called an intense 
expectation. Hence, so far as the idea of gnawing a bone is 
capable of stimulating to action, we have it in its strongest 
form. And what is the mental attitude of the strongest dog ? 
First, he also pictures to himself the pleasure of gnawing the 
bone which he sees before him ; but the idea is far less intense 
than that of the possessor ; he neither feels nor smells the bone, 
and the contemplated time of enjoyment is more remote. 
Moreover, experience has taught him (or instinct, the experi- 
ence of his forefathers) that the little dog will most probably 
make a fight of it, in which case even though victory be with 
the strong, it will not be unalloyed with pain and trouble. 
In short, his expectation will be nothing like so intense as that 
of the possessor. It is unnecessary to go farther into the 
psychology of the position : it is enough to show that a 
custom will tend to develop of respecting possession. But it 
win be based upon fear, and, among the lower animals, 
eventually inherited habit, rather than upon any sense of 
possessory right. 

Here is no recognition of the expediency of proportioning 
satisfaction to effort, but a recognition of the inexpediency of 
gratifying a desire at an expense in pain or risk which more 
than counterbalances the probable gain. The resulting habit 
is called the spirit of compromise. A boy with an apple in his 
hand has a better chance of eating it than a man a hundred 
yards off. The latter must give chase ; he must then struggle 
fox the apple, and may, even though successful, get a blow or a 
kick, and moreover, the apple may be eaten or thrown away 
before he can get it. The boy's rigJit, his well-warranted 
expectation of enjoyment, is recognised without any extraneous 
interference. Again, here is a weary hunter sitting alongside 
a stag he has captured. One who is fresh, and perhaps 
stronger, comes up, impelled by hunger. Here are the elements 
of a fierce conflict. Both expect pleasure and both expect pain 



28o INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

as the result of the fight. Now, both parties argue thus : A 
little with peace is better than the chance of much with the 
certainty of bruised limbs and the possibility of getting nothing. 
Wliy not share the prize in some proportion ? The question, 
What proportion ? is not settled by any reference to the efforts 
of the hunter, but by a rough calculation as to the least amount 
of blackmail which will induce the stronger man to keep the 
peace. Compromise is the germ of justice. 

It is obvious that, on the average, force is greatly economised 
by compromise. This force, which, on the average, is wasted 
to no purpose on internal conflicts, might be turned to better 
account by the group for purposes of external defence or 
aggression. And moreover, on the average, individuals would 
not lose by the arrangement. The State would therefore 
be impelled by self-interest to recognise all such compromises ; 
the State whose members practised the rule would tend 
to survive ; and the habit would be hardened into what we 
call instinct in the " lower animals," and conscience in man. 

But justice has another and a very different origin. This 
also is to be found in the patriarchal stage of social develop- 
ment. We need not go farther back in our search than the 
stage in which already there is recognition of offspring, and 
what is called parental love. ]N"or need we analyse that senti- 
ment. Parental love is a fact which nomology accepts as 
a datum. 

A parent, without perhaps being able to assign a better 
reason for it than sympathy, will not permit an elder child 
always to take advantage of his superior strength in his dealings 
with a younger. An arbitrary State interference takes place. 
And here is the second germ of justice. Why it is not just, 
parents do not trouble to inquire, but for some reason or other, 
based on sympathy with weakness, the possessor of superior 
muscular force is arbitrarily debarred from reaping the natural 
advantages of that superiority. Here is no question of fore- 
casting the probable result of a trial of strength, no compromise 
based on average economy. On the contrary, there is no doubt 
of the victory of the stronger if uninterfered with ; and, moreover, 
the adjustment is not a voluntary one, but compulsory. It is 
imposed from without. 



IX THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUALISM 281 

When the "gens" takes the place of the family as the 
political unit, the head of the house is no longer swayed by 
quite such immediate sympathy with the weaker members. 
In the meantime, his decisions have come to be based on 
principles of a more general character. Again, as these 
compound groups are recompounded, and the gens gives place 
to the tribe, personal sympathies are still further weakened, and 
judicial decisions are based on still wider generalisations — all 
of them, be it remembered, the outcome of experience, and not 
severally deduced from any high moral principle of abstract 
justice. When at last we reach the stage in which we see 
nations, each containing many tribes, all welded together into 
an organic state with its corpus juris civilis, the ruler can 
have but little, if any, personal knowledge of the citizens, and 
he (or those to whom the judicial function is delegated) must 
be guided in his decisions by rules of high generality which 
are popularly believed to be based on what is termed justice ; 
though what that is, not even the shrewdest of ancient or 
modern jurists has been able to tell us. What is connoted 
we do not know ; but we are now in a position to define 
"just," in this its second sense, as denoting those group 
interferences between individual citizens, which aim at more 
or less equalising the conditions of the competition. Here is no 
question of ascertaining by a rough forecast what the result of 
conflict would be, and arranging the matter accordingly, without 
recourse to force. Nor is the arrangement a voluntary one, 
based on the good sense of the two parties concerned — their 
reason, conscience, or inherited habit. It is an external 
interference by third parties for reasons based on sympathy 
with inferiority. This is accomplished by prohibiting the 
exercise of certain faculties (as a general prohibition) which, 
in a state of anarchy (or nature, as some wrongly call it), 
would give a decided advantage to one of the contending 
parties. Thus, on the plea of justice, forms of superior force 
came to be one by one eliminated. Stealth was, as a matter 
of history, long tolerated by the State when violence was 
deprecated. Later on, when stealth ceased to be allowed, low 
cunning was admired and permitted free play, just as nowa- 
days sharp practice is winked at by many who would recoil 



282 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

from fraud ; while even among those who are accounted 
high-minded among us, it is regarded as a laudable exercise of 
intellectual superiority to buy cheap from one who is ignorant 
of the true value of an article, and to sell dear to another who 
is also ignorant of it. Similarly the State permits what all 
honest men regard as blameworthy, while it ruthlessly puts its 
foot down on what appears hardly more culpable. Where the 
line will eventually be drawn it is impossible to say. The 
Eoman law allowed one who had sold a thing far below its 
true value to come upon the purchaser for an account : we do 
not. Which is just ? 

I wish to lay special stress on the double origin of what is 
popularly regarded as justice. One is socialism : the other is 
individualism. The one is based originally on parental sym- 
pathy, which slowly expands from the family to humanity ; 
the other is based on selfish compromise, and tends finally to 
absorb the whole field of law. Altruism tends to become 
wholly voluntary and law to become wholly based on average 
individual advantage and implied voluntary contract. Thus 
scientific anarchy is shown to be the end towards which 
society is moving. That is to say, we are approaching a state 
in which law, based on the rights of the selfish, will be tempered 
not by paternal despotism and compulsory charity (a contradic- 
tion in terms), but by true voluntary altruism. 

At the same time the individualist is bound to recognise 
the organic nature of social groups, and to remember that to 
artificially and arbitrarily impose a more advanced form on an 
organism not yet ripe for it is not to hasten but to retard its 
development. To uproot the poor-law system, to abolish the 
system of State police, to leave prosecution for murder to the 
initiative of the murdered man's friends, or the Union to which 
he voluntarily affiliated himself, to leave the defence of territory 
to those who cared to defend it — such an extension of the 
principle at the present time in any existing country would 
be about as prudent and scientific a course as to impose free 
institutions, a representative system, and trial by jury on the 
Fijians. A wise gardener does not open a rosebud with an 
oyster knife. Hence I must not be understood as advocating 
the immediate practical application of principles which apply 



IX THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUALISM 283 

to future civilisations. I prefer to regard them as tendencies, 
and therefore as finger-posts to direct us on the line of least 
resistance. The ideal in all things is that towards which we 
may ever strive but which we may never reach. 

It now remains for us to decide whether by the term 
" rights " we mean moral rights or legal rights. The definition 
is optional. Usage justifies either. But having chosen, let us 
beware of employing the word in one sense in the major premiss, 
and in the other sense in the minor premiss, or the conclusion. 
Austin chose to define rights as legal rights ; he was quite 
justified in doing this ; and having done it, he never swerved 
to the right hand nor to the left. Mr. Spencer chooses to put 
the other interpretation on the term as used by Austin, and 
thus makes him appear to say that which is ridiculous. 
Austin knew perfectly well that usage precedes law, but he 
also knew that rights could not precede government in the 
sense in which he employed the terms, which is obvious. 

It is clear from argument based on economy of force that 
the State would tend in many classes of cases to sanction 
pre-existing moral rights ; but the " justification " or " warrant " 
for this course would be not the moral rights themselves, but the 
gain to the group. Hundreds of instances will readily occur to 
the mind wherein the State has, so to speak, ridden roughshod 
over moral rights, and wisely so too. Lazarus at the gate of 
the rich man had a moral right (in the opinion of the narrator's 
countrymen) to some part of the other's wealth ; but the State 
did not sanction that claim, and it is currently admitted that 
it would be inexpedient for any state to sanction such a claim. 
Here we have a moral right which does not tend to grow into 
a legal right. It is unnecessary to ascertain the basis of the 
moral right ; it is enough to show that if law is to be based, as Mr. 
Spencer thinks, on " natural rights," by which he seems to mean 
some kind of moral rights, then we shall have group-morality 
(law) which is not based on group-welfare, which is absurd. 

Let us turn to the evolution of law. What is a law in the 
nomological sense ? It is the statement of an invariable 
sequence of which the antecedent is the act of an individual 
citizen or individual citizens, and the consequent is the act 
of the group or state. No amount of enacting or legislating 



284 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

makes a law ; it is the carrying out of the enactment, or an 
invariable tendency to carry it out, in the absence of disturbing 
causes, such as ignorance, false evidence, escape of wrongdoer, 
etc., which justifies the statement and verifies the law. Of 
course there are many so-called State laws (statutes, etc.) 
which are not as a fact carried out in practice. Some are 
obsolete, others unworkable, and others uncongenial to the 
conscience of the age. All such are but distorted reflections 
or mendacious mis-statements of the true law (lN"aturrecht), 
which as a fact obtains. Such so-called State laws, statutes, 
decrees, edicts, etc., must continue to be called laws out of 
deference to popular usage ; but the true laws in the scientific 
sense — statical laws — are the statements of invariable sequences, 
by whomsoever promulged. It is the province of the legislator 
to discover these laws ; and more — to divine by a study of 
history and his own time the changes which are in course of 
being worked out ; to discover by some process not only the 
law as it is, but the law as it tends to become. The laws of 
the change and development of statical laws may in Comtist 
phraseology be termed dynamical nomological laws. And the 
first question for the nomologist to decide is, as to the method 
to be adopted in the search. Transcendental jurists, it is 
needless to observe, adopt the method which, oddly enough, 
Mr. Spencer has followed and defended. The laws as they 
ought to be, must, they say, be deduced, like the propositions 
of Euclid, from one or a few fundamental principles, of which 
the chief is fiat justitia. 

The empirical school of jurists, on the other hand, contend 
that there are no known truths of the highest generality, and 
that each law must be tested on its merits by its fitness to 
conduce to the wellbeing of the people, or some of them. 
And they proceed to find this out in each case by observation, 
experiment, or calculation — an heroic task, which does more 
credit to their patience than to their appreciation of the 
vastness of the subject. All seem alike to overlook the 
suitability of the method adopted in the other inductive 
sciences — that of making inductions from the minor social 
rules which have stood the test of time ; of casting the 
conclusion into the form of a more general rule ; of extracting, 



IX THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUALISM 285 

when possible, that which is common to this rule, and other 
general rules arrived at by a similar process, and so of arriving 
at a rule of higher generality. As in other departments of 
science, the inquirer is then in possession of many laws of 
various degrees of generality, which he must verify by applying 
them to new or unconsidered or hypothetical cases. This 
process of exhaustive subsumption will either strengthen the 
probability of his original conclusion, or show up the weak 
point in it ; in which latter case he will be in a position 
to qualify it in accordance with his widened experience. The 
third part of the process which is conveniently carried on 
concurrently with the others, is that of making deductions 
from the general laws reached by induction. As in other 
branches of inquiry, some of the greatest and most valuable 
truths will be brought to light by this process ; but it need 
hardly be said that the value of a deduction depends not only 
on the correctness of the logic, but on the truth of the premiss. 
Hence it is that most of the deductions hitherto contributed 
to ethics and jurisprudence, being deductions not from general- 
isations based on the actual sequences observed in the actions 
of men and of groups of men, but on meaningless dogmas as to 
Duty, Justice, Virtue, Eight, and the like, have little or no 
value whatsoever. 

The historical source of law has already been indicated, 
and it is evident that State laws are not, and never have been, 
deductions from the highest moral truths, or supposed truths. 
They took their rise from the generalisations which were of 
necessity made when questions became too nuniierous and too 
complicated to be decided, each, from beginning to end, on its 
merits. Precedents were cited ; the ratio decidendi was ex- 
tracted, correctly or erroneously, and the result was a State law. 

In making these generalisations, either consciously or un- 
consciously, the law-makers or judges of old naturally made 
imperfect inductions, just as our lawyers do now. They 
seized upon some accidental feature common to a number of 
cases which seemed similar, instead of upon the essential 
feature. This accidental feature they took as the basis of the new 
generalisation' or State law. To take a modern instance of 
this fallacy. Of thousands of partnership cases tried in this 



286 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

country, community of profit and loss seems to be a common 
feature. Hence lawyers of high repute (see Lindley on 
" Partnership ") have seized upon this trait as the distinctive 
mark of partnership ; thus confounding the accidental with 
the essential, and entailing great injustice and hardship. The 
essential element in partnership is not community of profit 
and loss, but reciprocal guaranty. It may be said that nearly 
all bad State laws which are not the result of erroneous 
beliefs are due to false generalisations. Nearly all the con- 
fusions, the complications, and the injustice of the English 
laws relating to liens, to mortgages, to debts of priority, to 
consideration, to bankruptcy, etc. etc., are due to blunder- 
ing generalisations. Lien, for example, has never yet been 
correctly defined in any legal authority, simple and beautiful 
as the connotation is. Consequently, many true liens are 
unrecognised by law, whilst others are sanctioned which have 
no proper existence, to the great injury of the actual owner. 
Like remarks apply to such elementary legal conceptions as 
debt and security. In many cases the false generalisation is 
too wide ; it covers cases which bear only a superficial 
resemblance ; but in others it frequently fails to cover cases to 
which the correct ratio decidendi applies. 

Some State laws are repealed, or cease to be operative ; 
others persist through centuries of social development. What 
is the reason for the survival of some laws and the extinction 
of others ? Tribes whose laws conduce to the wellbeing of 
the race necessarily outlive and thrust out of existence those 
tribes whose laws, however apparently reasonable or just, do 
not conduce to the group - welfare. This becomes more 
obvious when we reflect that in some times and places laws 
are operative and conducive to group-welfare which in other 
countries or in other ages would clearly lead to disintegration. 
No one pretends that monogamy, for example, would be a 
desirable institution in a poultry-yard. Few would condemn 
polygamy among nomad tribes in a thinly-populated area. Is 
there a hint as to its immorality or inexpediency in the Old 
Testament ? Again, infanticide was legally practised by 
Greeks and Eomans, and to-day it is recognised in China. 
Even stealing is said to have been lawful in Sparta ; and 



IX THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUALISM 287 

duelling is allowed and encouraged in several European 
countries to-day. We have only to refer to Montesquieu for 
numerous instances of laws and customs in vogue among 
peoples separated from us by space and time, which, if 
introduced into nineteenth-century England, would probably 
ruin the country. We shall easily satisfy ourselves that the 
fitness of a law is not to be tested by any reference to a 
supposed standard of justice or virtue, but by its effect on the 
eventual welfare of the race adopting it. If it is not conducive 
to the group -welfare one of two things will happen: 
either the law will be dropped, or the group will perish. 
Thus the just and the unjust laws (regarded from any 
arbitrary standpoint) will survive together where they are 
conducive to the welfare of the group ; they will perish 
together where they are not conducive. And so it befalls that 
many good laws are not just, if judged by the common sense 
of a so-called just man. (For that justice has a connotation, 
though undiscovered, there can be little doubt ; and that, in 
the absence of a true definition, there is no better clue to the 
connotation of the term than the instinctive feeling of the 
multitude in applying it to the concrete, is also tenable.) Indeed 
since the widest -ranging laws are but generalisations from 
laws of less generality, and since every step of the process 
opens the door to fallacies which may become ingrained in the 
law, it follows that in a highly civilised and complex society 
hardly any of the laws, whether written or unwritten, can be 
regarded as just. The most that can be shown in their favour 
is that any alternative laws which might be proposed would 
probably result in even greater injustice — in a larger number of 
cases of hardship than the existing laws ; which in many cases 
is not saying much. But such is the force of habit that we 
seem to see justice in a law of undoubted expediency in w^hich 
there is not a tittle, in any sense of the term, which has ever 
been suggested. This habit blinds us to the immense 
differentiation which has taken place in morals and laws. He 
who would deduce laws as they ought to be {ix. as they tend 
to be) from morals, must be capable of calculating the present 
position of the geological strata from a knowledge of the 
antecedent physical conditions of the globe. 



288 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

From a very early stage we find the moral and the legal 
rights in collision. For instance, how came it that when the 
weaker child tried to take possession of a thing which the 
elder and stronger was using, the parent refrained from 
equalising the conditions ? Brute force was allowed to pre- 
dominate. Here the sympathy with intensity of expectation 
overpowered the sympathy with physical weakness. And so 
at the present day proprietary right prevails over sympathy 
with the hardships and disadvantageous position of the poor. 
It is in accordance with the group-welfare. It is only when 
man enters upon the scene that sympathy with intense dis- 
appointment after intense expectation and antipathy for the 
cause of the disappointment are manifested. From the 
moment when the family as a whole, through the patriarch, 
interferes on behalf of the holder or possessor of a thing and 
against the would-be despoiler, from that moment we have 
the recognition of possessory right. 

Let us follow up the development of this recognised right. 
We have seen how it would come about that one who had 
gathered a cocoa-nut would be left in undisputed enjoyment, or 
that otherwise the State would interfere to ensure that result. 
I^ow suppose he had captured a stag, and could not eat the 
whole of it at one meal. Four courses would lie open to him : 
he could carry about with him as much of the carcase as he 
could lift, and relinquish the rest ; or he could sit down along- 
side of it until he was again hungry ; or he might hand over to 
a friend as much as he could not eat ; or lastly, he could inform 
all and sundry that the carcase was his own, that he claimed it, 
that he could, if he chose, remain with it and so get his claim re- 
spected, and that to compel him to do so would be a restriction on 
his liberty. Probably this fourth course would be the last to be 
adopted, but it would necessarily come into use, for the simple 
reason that it would be a saving of the common time — an 
economy of group-force. And not until the recognition of this 
right over a thing not in actual possession came to be assured, 
could the right of property in its fullest sense be said to have 
reached maturity. From the third course, which would be 
based on the possessory right of intensity of expectation, would 
of course spring the right of gift, transfer, or alienation. 



IX THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUALISM 289 

The right to things within the grip or within the power of 
immediate resumption has widened into a right to things not 
within the grip ; this presently and necessarily extends to 
prescriptive ownership. The claim to ownership, once put 
forward without dispute, lasts indefinitely. Then the right 
of gift develops irresistibly into a right to transfer, from donor 
to donee, a thing out of reach by word of mouth. And since 
it takes time to obtain possession of a thing at a distance, 
it clearly comes to pass that a future gift is regarded as 
valid. Meanwhile mutual gifts or exchanges have become 
frequent, and gifts in exchange for future services have 
developed into conditional future gifts, or rather conditional 
promises to give. It is clear that from this would arise in the 
most natural manner the recognition of gift contingent on the 
death of the donor, or, in other words, of testamentary bequest ; 
which is the key-stone of the present system of civilisation — 
property in perpetuity. Temporary rights over things held by 
others would tend to come into existence without blurring or 
weakening the proprietary or permanent right of the true owner ; 
and thus the State would come to sanction the rights of hirers 
and lenders. It is quite needless in this place to trace the 
gradual growth from the original germ — possessory right — of 
the innumerable forms of rights over things now sanctioned by 
the modern State. 

Thus from absolute liberty, common to man and the lower 
animals, tempered by sympathies and antipathies in harmony 
with group-welfare, spring first possession by tacit understand- 
ing, then right of possession sanctioned by patriarchal power, 
which is the incipient State ; this extends to recognised 
possession of things not within the grip or immediate resump- 
tion. (No hard-and-fast line can be drawn between these 
stages of possessory right.) Then come prescriptive ownership, 
together with uses to alien property, sub-uses of several degrees ; 
condominium, which tends to split up into property in the narrow 
sense, and lien (not even yet fully differentiated) ; and finally, 
property in ideas and other more complex proprietary rights. 

To sum up. If " rights " is a term with two meanings, 
"justice," which is used to connote that unknown principle 
common to all rights, must also have two meanings. Justice 

U 



290 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

may be that which is common to all moral rights, or that 
which is common to all legal rights ; and if it is the one it 
cannot be the other. It is not a case of the greater including 
the less ; the two principles are disparate. Most moderns 
employ the term in its ethical sense. Hobbes, as we have seen, 
employed the term in its nomological sense, just as Austin 
employed the term rights ; and (so far as Mr. Spencer's criti- 
cism is concerned) with the same result, namely, that of laying 
himself open to misrepresentation by one who does not take 
the trouble to ascertain beforehand in what sense the term is 
used. Common usage hardly justifies Hobbes's use of the word, 
which, at all events nowadays, is used to express a moral 
abstraction ; and it will be well to confine it to this purpose. 
To contend that the true laws (those actually carried out as an 
invariable rule) cannot be unjust, would be paradoxical to 
modern ears. That they cannot be illegal is a safer proposition, 
and a truism withal. 

We have seen that there was a time when justice was non- 
existent, and by what process of evolution it was eventually 
brought about that certain classes of actions came to be regarded 
as just and others as unjust. Nothing now remains to be 
done but by a survey of just actions (as generally admitted at 
any time and place) to extract the essential common peculiarity, 
and the result is the connotation of justice. The definition 
will never be reached by laboured arguments on the model of 
a geometrical theorem, as may be seen from an examination of 
Mr. Sidgwick's able analysis of the conception in his Methods 
of Ethics — a work of great negative value, but absolutely 
barren of positive results. With ethics, as a so-called practical 
science — as a science of that which ought to be, in contradistinc- 
tion from that which is — we have nothing to do ; neither, 
similarly, with jurisprudence as vulgarly defined. It is in all 
probability the visionary and unpractical conclusions reached 
by jurists which have rendered that branch of inquiry so 
unpopular with laiwyers — that is to say, with those who may 
be supposed to be more than other people practically acquainted 
with the problems contemplated. It is not jurisprudence as 
hitherto treated which is the necessary preliminary to the fruit- 
ful study of politics, but rather what may be termed nomology, 



IX THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUALISM 291 

or the inductive science of law. Before proceeding farther, it 
may be as well to restate what has so far been stated only by 
implication as to the nature and method of this science. 

]N"omology then is the scientific study of certain of the 
relations subsisting between the organised group and the units 
or individuals of which it is composed ; or, in other words, of 
those sequences of which the consequent is a willed act of the 
group following upon an antecedent act or situation of one or 
some of its units. This definition of the subject is no doubt 
technical, and at first sight not very intelligible ; but it is 
accurate, and strictly in harmony with the definitions of other 
branches of science. For the scientific study of things (which 
term rightly includes relations) means an inquiry into their 
origin, growth, development past and future, and decay ; and it 
is well, before making use of colloquial or slipshod language, to 
be sure that it truly represents a clear and precise idea. At 
the same time, a translation of the technical into homely 
English is also desirable in order to avoid pedantry of diction 
throughout, and to dispense with circumlocution. Vulgar 
parlance, in fine, often serves as a short formula, and combines 
brevity with apparent simplicity — an appearance due, however, 
rather to use than to logical exactness. In plain language 
then, nomology treats of those acts of the State which are 
voluntary and which are caused by the contemplation of 
situations or doings of individual members of it. And indeed 
we may without much danger cut out the term " situation," 
for by far the greater proportion of State acts are performed in 
response to the ads of individuals ; while those due to the 
contemplation of their unchanged situation are at all times few, 
and in the case of developed societies almost entirely absent. 
Thus in this country at the present day the State punishes no 
man on account of his position, as, for instance, because he is 
deformed, or dark complexioned, or unfit for military service, 
or even leprous or otherwise loathsome. Nor does the State 
reward or compensate men otherwise than for a change in their 
position, except in case of extreme poverty, and even the poor- 
laws may be said to be rather a safety-valve against rebellion 
than a tribute to pity. Be that as it may, it is certain that 
the enormous majority of State acts follow upon a change : 



292 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

that change is brought about either by so-called natural causes 
(accident), or by the act of a member or members of the State. 
Thus, on the one hand, your house may be struck by lightning, 
or you may be kicked by a horse ; or, on the other hand, your 
watch may be taken by a thief, or your ribs broken by a 
garotter. In the first of these cases the deplorable change in 
your situation will not induce the active sympathy of the State ; 
but in the latter cases, where the change is due to the act of 
another person, then the State is moved to action. So that we 
may eliminate, as the causes of State action, not only unchang- 
ing situations, but also changes caused by accident or nature 
(in which terms are included all causes other than the acts of 
fellow-members of the State). Again, those acts of members 
of a state which are virtuous and worthy of approbation do 
not in a highly-developed society entail any regular recognition 
by the State, such as a reward. Where rewards for virtue or 
for public service are made, it is not according to law or 
regular rule, but according to the feeling of the moment. So 
that we may also eliminate such acts of the citizen as do not 
so arouse the anger or antipathy of the State as to entail State 
action. And this leaves us with no cause worth much con- 
sideration but the hateful acts of members of the community. 

These group-acts being voluntary and following on the con- 
templation of the acts of members, it is clear that such con- 
templation must arouse feelings of pleasure and pain sufi&cient 
to serve as motives. When produced by regarding the 
sufferings or pleasures of others, these feelings are called 
sympathy or antipathy according as they are like or unlike the 
feelings regarded. Thus we may sympathise with one who is 
either in pain or in pleasure ; so similarly we may antipathise 
(so to speak) with one in either situation. It is absolutely 
essential to conceive of the group or state as acting in accord- 
ance with the motives of sympathy and antipathy ; such acts 
taking the form of charity, compensation, or reward, in the one 
case, and of spoliation, compulsory restitution, or punishment, 
in the other. It will be objected that this arrangement leaves 
no room for the whole important class of legal rights. And 
this is in fact so. But it will be remembered that we are at 
present considering the antecedents or causes of State acts, and 



IX THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUALISM 293 

not the effects of such acts (which may of course be regarded 
as included in such acts), and it will become apparent that a 
legal right, as such, cannot rouse the State to action. How 
should it ? A legal right has by implication been defined as a 
liberty or power which owes its existence to the recognition 
and guaranty of the State. So long as that right exists, the 
power is or may be exercised ; but when the power ceases to 
be exercised or exercisable, that right is is'po facto dead. 
There no longer is any such power, whether guaranteed by the 
State or not. Therefore a legal right cannot serve as a cause 
of State action. 

But the change in the situation may arouse the sympathy 
of the State ; and if that change has been caused by the act of 
a citizen, then such act may arouse the antipathy of the State. 
Or both sentiments may be aroused simultaneously. Thus the 
wrong may be an antecedent of State action ; and the change in 
the situation of the injured party may likewise so serve. And, 
as has already been hinted, it is only, or almost only, when 
the misfortune is regarded as connected with the reprehensible 
conduct of another, that the State as a fact does take 
action, and then probably' as much for the sake of hurting the 
wrong-doer as of benefiting the sufferer. 

It is impossible in this brief sketch to enter upon the 
keenly-debated question of the nature of the difference between 
crime and injury, involving, as it does, the definition of crime. 
It may therefore be pardonable to express dogmatically the 
view that crimes are those acts of individual citizens which 
arouse the antipathy of the State for the wrong -doer suf- 
ficiently to bring abou.t a State act of the nature of punish- 
ment ; while a civil injury is an act which, without necessarily 
arousing any State antipathy for the agent, arouses State 
sympathy with another citizen who is hurt by it. The 
resulting group-act has for its end, not the punishment of the 
doer, but the rehabilitation of the sufferer ; though for reasons 
connected with group competition, the restitution or compensa- 
tion or reparation resulting from the State act does, as a rule, 
also operate as a punishment on the doer of the injury. For 
example, if one who carelessly breaks a shop -window is made 
to pay for a new one, it is not because his act is regarded by 



294 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

the State with positive antipathy, but because sympathy with 
the owner of the window is sufficient to entail State action on 
his behalf. At the same time, it is clearly a painful thing 
(virtually a punishment) for the injurer to be compelled to 
pay. 

A fundamental division in the study of the law is that which 
is based on this difference between crime and injury. And 
one of the first dynamical laws which the study of nomology 
will bring to light, is that which relates to the gradual 
absorption of the law of crimes into the law of civil injuries. 

Seeing that both classes of laws tend to restrain rather 
than to impel, it is clear that the law as a whole may be 
regarded as restraint on liberty. In order to understand 
liberty, we must first understand law. Liberty is the com- 
plement of law. When we know the angle, w^e know its 
complement. 

And now let us reconsider the whole question from the 
opposite point of view. What is liberty ? We are told that 
in a state of nature we are all free ; there is too much liberty. 
Take the case of the wolf and the lamb. Here we have a 
"state of nature" — a state of absolute liberty. The wolf is 
at liberty to devour the lamb ; and similarly, the lamb is at 
liberty to devour the wolf — if it can. The poor Indian, bound 
to a tree to be shot at by his neighbours, is living in a state 
of perfect liberty — equal liberty ; for he was free to tie his 
neighbours to the tree and take shots at them. A state of 
full liberty then, is one in which the strong are free to rob 
the weak, and the weak are free to rob the strong. Clearly 
this is an unenviable state of things for the weak. The strong 
may call it liberty, but the weak call it anarchy. The two 
are identical. Then why all this outcry for liberty, and never 
a word for anarchy ? We all know that in order to escape 
from the evils of liberty, men banded themselves together in 
groups not consciously or suddenly, but by a slow process of 
evolution which can be explained ; and virtually agreed to 
suppress by united action certain forms of force. In short, 
the actions of individuals were brought more or less under the 
control of the group — Society, the State. Once created and 
set in motion, this club or state tended from various causes to 



IX THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUALISM 295 

encroach more and more on the freedom of the individuals 
composing it, until the restraints, the exactions, and the 
meddlings of the governing body at last brought about a 
reaction in favour of a partial return to anarchy — liberty. 
Certain matters and things were removed from the domain of 
State control, and men were no worse, but all the better for 
the change. The State, for various reasons connected with the 
structure of the ruling body, brought itself into disrepute ; and 
each deliverance from its arbitrary interference was hailed as 
a clear gain to the liberties of the people. In some cases the 
change was for the better. In others it was again found 
necessary to revert to the system of State control. The reason 
why certain matters can safely be left to the free action of 
individuals, whereas others can not, may be shown in detail ; 
but no general statement has yet been framed by which we 
can see at a glance beforehand whether a particular matter 
should be controlled by the State, or may safely be left to the 
unfettered action of the units. Civil liberty then may be 
accurately defined as the greatest possible freedom of the 
individual from State interference, compatible with the well- 
being of the social organism. 

But to set up this definition as a practical rule of action is 
vain. It is like telling one who asks for moral guidance to 
keep to the path of virtue. What he wants to know is, which 
is the path of virtue. Similarly, the practical statesman 
wants to know which are the matters wherein the State must 
here and now exercise some kind of control in order to secure 
the stability of society, and which are the matters to be 
safely left to individual caprice. 

Is it not unphilosophical, without the strongest reason, to 
contend that what at one time led to the elevation of man- 
kind, namely the substitution of organised social control for 
antagonistic and competitive individual free efforts, at another 
time leads to its deterioration ? — that what was once a factor in 
social integration, is now a factor in social disintegration ? 
And yet this is the position taken up by the worshippers of 
liberty pure and simple, like Mr. Spencer and Mr. Auberon 
Herbert. Government is the cement which binds the units 
together into a complex whole. Moreover, the study of history 



296 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

shows US unmistakably that the increasing tendency has been 
and is in the direction of rendering the Government stronger 
and stronger in proportion to the individual forces opposed to 
it. Crime is followed by punishment more speedily and more 
certainly than it was of old. It is not the weakening but the 
strengthening of the State to which we must look for the 
amelioration of society — the subordination of the will of each 
to the welfare of all. And this is called socialism. Yet we 
do not find that even the most pronounced socialists aim at 
supplanting freedom of thought by the religion of the majority, 
or of any ruling body ; nor do they aim at reviving any of the 
ancient laws by which the dress and food of the various classes 
of persons were prescribed by Government. Just as the 
extremest individualist would shrink from destroying Govern- 
ment altogether, and repealing the whole of the criminal law, 
so would the extremest socialist shrink from subordinating 
the will of the units in all matters to State control. Hence 
we are again driven to the conclusion that " a line must be 
drawn somewhere." And the question still is, Where ? Mr. 
Auberon Herbert draws it at the elimination of brute force, or 
what he calls " direct compulsion." But on his own showing 
he is driven to some strange shifts in order to show how 
certain actions, which he and all men agree should be 
forbidden and punished by the State, are but forms of brute 
force. If one pours noxious vapours into the air, he is 
" constraining the faculties of those who are obliged to breathe 
the poisoned air against their own consent." If one falsely 
libels his neighbour, he has "taken his own actions from him, 
and substituted other actions for them ; " and so on. It is 
fair to say that Mr. Herbert has misgivings as to the soundness 
of these explanations. What is " direct compulsion " as 
distinct from indirect ? Two monkeys in an apple-tree are 
apt to fall out — especially if the apples are few. Two hungry 
hyaenas in presence of a fat carcase are apt to fight. Sheep on 
a barren hill-side, on the other hand, eat away as hard as they 
can, and starve each other to death, indirectly, as it were. 
They do not seem to have arrived at a perception of the 
elementary truth, that the simplest way to get the better of a 
rival is to " remove " him. Perhaps the Carnivora find 



IX THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUALISM 297 

themselves better armed for the fray ; and besides, if suc- 
cessful, they are immediately rewarded with a ready-made 
repast. Sheep do not care for mutton. But there is another 
reason for their peaceful behaviour. If the weaker, or more 
cowardly, or more peaceable of the two hyaenas, glaring at the 
dead turkey, could see a few lean birds lying about all round, 
perhaps he would leave his bigger rival in undisputed 
possession of the turkey. But he does not, and he is very 
liungry. He must fight, or starve a little longer. Now, when 
a strong sheep finds a weaker one browsing luxuriously on a 
well -covered hillock, he quietly hustles him out of the way 
and takes his place, while the weaker brother retires to some 
neighbouring spot where the herbage is short and brown. 
Why the stronger do not pommel the weaker out of existence 
once for all, is a question of sheep sociology which is not the 
subject of the present inquiry. 

What should be pointed out is, that savage man in the 
hunting stage did rise, and does rise, to the far-seeing stand- 
point of the tiger, and, consciously or unconsciously, discerns 
the expedience, as an economy of force, of fighting and killing 
his rivals at once, rather than putting himself to the trouble 
of continually outstripping them in the chase day after day 
and year after year. One of these modes is direct, the other 
is indirect. In what way is the one more justifiable than the 
other ? At all events they do fight and eliminate one another 
to an extent unsurpassed even by the Carnivora, so that, as a 
fact, few if any of them die of starvation after the manner of 
their more peaceable descendants. But presently again, with- 
out any very clear consciousness of what they are aiming at, they 
begin to discover that although it is in the main a good thing 
to decimate their fellow-men, it is just as well to tolerate the 
competition of a few of them, with a view to co-operation against 
more distant rivals. There can be little doubt that the germ 
of co-operation is to be found in the instincts of gregarious 
animals. Here the instinct of competition comes into conflict 
with the instinct of co-operation, and thus at this early stage 
a line has to be drawn in practice, if not in theory, between 
the one province and the other. During the course of social 
development, when co-operation becomes conscious, organised. 



298 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

and compulsory, we have the State. Some classes of actions 
pass in and out of the domain of State control many times in 
the course of history, and it is only after centuries of experi- 
ment that the consensus of society finally settles down (perhaps 
for no clearly assignable reason) in favour of leaving them 
permanently in one province or the other. Thus, what may 
be called the group-opinion in this country seems now to be 
settling down in favour of allowing the expression of religious 
and scientific beliefs to be left free from State interference. In 
the matter of the marriage relation, the group -opinion seems 
for the present pretty well settled in the opposite way. Now 
this group-opinion is tolerably clear and steady long before the 
advent of majorities to direct control of legislation, and it must 
therefore have a basis, a raison d'etre, though not necessarily a 
consciously recognised one. And that basis is surely the well- 
being of the group as a whole. So that, although we may not 
be able to tell beforehand whether any particular class of 
actions should or should not be brought within the domain of 
State control at any particular stage of social development, we 
can say that, whatever the group-will may be on the subject, 
it is actuated, consciously or unconsciously, by a striving after 
the welfare of that particular society as a whole. The group may 
be mistaken, just as an individual may err in honestly doing 
what he believes to be best for himself in the long run ; but it 
is surely better and safer to trust to the group-instinct, and 
to have faith in the forward tendency of society, though its gait 
be a little zigzag, than to put it into a strait-jacket whenever 
its action does not seem to fit in with some preconceived theory 
of group-morals. 

But though liberty thus turns out to be a word without 
any positive meaning, it is clear that certain forms of liberty 
are good and other forms are bad. And the distinction between 
them at any stage of development is between the individual 
liberty which is compatible with the group-welfare, and that 
which is not. Names are of little consequence ; but the latter 
may be called license, and the former civil liberty. It may 
fairly be doubted whether there has ever been a restraint put 
upon individuals by even the most despotic of governments, 
which may not at one time or another have been a necessary 



IX THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUALISM 299 

and beneficent concomitant of social evolution. The power of 
life and death exercised by the old Eoman paterfamilias over 
his children and slaves was probably at one time an unmixed 
good. And the like power of the King of the Ashantees is or 
was probably conducive to the group- welfare. 

Is there then no discoverable rule for our practical guidance ? 
Is there no observable tendency, no law of social development, 
upon which we can build up a practical working maxim of 
legislation ? I beheve there is ; but it is not embodied in 
the formula " N^o Government." 

The first requisite for social integration was a strong central 
power which should effectually suppress all forms of individual 
activity calculated to injure the group as a whole. Tribes 
which developed this form of organisation waxed strong, 
while tribes which consisted of undiscipLLned and disorderly 
numbers were crushed out in the struggle for existence. Thus 
the tendency to centralise was brought about necessarily, 
and to a certain extent unconsciously, just as the gregarious 
habits of sheep and deer have been developed without that 
clear prevision for group-defence which the habits seem to 
imply. 

And just as in getting copper out of the earth we get with 
it many other things which are worse than useless, so in 
obtaining control of certain of the actions of its component 
members, the group got control of many other classes of actions 
which could not at the time be easily distinguished or dis- 
entangled. Having got our copper-ore and its surrounding 
rubbish to the surface, succeeding operations consist of disengag- 
ing the useless from the useful. Some of the substances, like 
sulphur, are very persistent, but in time the metal shines forth 
pure and bright. So it is with political institutions. The 
whole history of civilisation is one long series of operations for 
the disentangling of the metal from the dross. That which is 
good and necessary in the law — State prevention or elimination 
of certain classes of actions, such as murder and assault, steal- 
ing and breach of contract, nuisance and indecence, etc. etc. — 
becomes more and more marked, stronger and more popular. 
Good citizens do not chafe under it — it even ceases to be re- 
garded as a restraint upon liberty ; while that which is bad 



300 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

and unnecessary is from time to time expelled from the body 
of the law, or, as the saying is, the people wrest from their 
rulers one liberty after another. To take a recent instance : 
it is only a generation ago that the English people wrested 
from the Government the liberty to buy what they wanted in 
the cheapest markets. To-day they are struggling to throw off 
the last remaining fetters in the matter of full religious 
liberty. 

This then is the observed fact, that as civilisation advances 
the State tends to throw off one claim after another to interfere 
with the free action of its members, while at the same time it 
becomes stronger, more regular, speedier, and more certain in 
performing the functions that remain to it. Where it interferes 
it interferes thoroughly. 

At the present time the tendency is one of throwing off 
certain form's of State control. Therefore when we see an agita- 
tion got up for the purpose of adding to the duties of the State, we 
may reasonably conclude primd facie that it is an agitation in 
the wrong direction. This is one practical rule. And when we 
see the State interfering in matters having little in common 
with what is becoming more and more clearly marked out as 
its normal province, and much in common with what has long 
ago been relegated to the domain of private enterprise, we are 
again logically justified in presuming that such matters ought 
to be removed from the domain of State control. Upon those 
who maintain a contrary opinion must rest the onus p^obandi, the 
burden of showing why these matters should be under control, 
while those are left to individual freedom. This then is the 
ground upon which individualists can take their stand. If 
they aim at more they are in danger of drifting into circular 
arguments about rights and liberty, and the like metaphysical 
and casuistical shallows, where their adversaries will have them 
at advantage. 

But if this is the position to be taken up by those 
individual thinkers whose study of sociology has led them to 
perceive that the tendency is in the direction of the widest 
liberty compatible with social stability, while others have 
reached the opposite conclusion, namely, that the State is a 
great machine for doing things better than individual enterprise 



IX THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUALISM 301 

— what is to be the attitude of the bulk of non- thinkers 
towards these two parties ? It is hardly to be expected that 
each labourer, before recording his vote for a parliamentary 
candidate, will make himself acquainted with the principles of 
sociology, nor is it likely that he will arrive by intuition at a 
more correct view of political questions than those who, even 
after some study, have embraced the doctrine of socialism. 
Even if he entrust his political conscience and his vote to a 
better-educated man than himself, is there any reason to hope 
that he will choose an individualist as his mentor rather than 
a State socialist ? ISTot the least. What then is the form of 
government which both parties should concur in regarding as 
best calculated to lead in the end to that political system which 
they respectively regard as the best system ? Probably every 
one believes in the one-man form of government, provided he 
himself is the one man. If individualists could get hold of the 
tiller, assuming always that they are on the right tack and in 
advance of the age, no doubt they would realise the ideal of good 
government more quickly than by trusting to the resultant of 
conflicting forces in a democratic society. But putting that on 
one side as out of the question, can they refuse to lend 
their support to a system of civil equality, a system towards 
which we are gradually approximating? In the conflict of 
opposing efforts that which is fittest will survive. To deny 
this is to despair of the race. If we have not faith in the 
ultimate emergence of our struggling fellow-countrymen from 
darkness into light, then we are trying to bring about by 
artificial means what will not come by nature. Those who lack 
faith in the destiny of the race must do what they can to keep 
afloat, so long as may be, by a process of patching and tinkering, 
and of a judicious drawing upon the group -capital for the 
requirements of the present generation. But those who have 
that faith must learn to look without dread on the temporary 
aberrations of the people. They must bear in mind that 
throughout history it has marched steadily forward, not indeed 
without turnings and backslidings, but still, in the long run, 
forward on the path of civilisation ; and that there is ingrained 
in the very nature of civilised man an inherited love of fairness, 
and an instinctive belief in the wisdom of proportioning satisfac- 



302 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

tion to intelligent effort, which will not easily be eradicated. It 
is this belief which underlies respect for property, and not any 
sublimated a 'priori " warrant " whatsoever. Thus every man 
who has faith in the race must ascertain by observation the 
tendencies in the structural development of the State, and 
instead of struggling against those tendencies — instead of 
stemming the advancing tide with his mop — he must 
welcome such reforms as history points to, in the confident 
expectation that any temporary concomitant ills will be more 
than counterbalanced by future gains. If his own ideal 
conclusions on matters political, scientific, or aesthetic are 
correct, they will be realised by trusting to the unimpeded 
advance of the democracy. If they are wrong, he will rejoice 
to think that his efforts will be cancelled by those of better 
men. Be he individualist or socialist he will loyally accept 
the verdict of the people. 

Personal liberty is the final outcome of social evolution, 
and not the cause. The wider the area, the greater the number 
and diversity of conflicting interests, the nigher will be the 
advent of individualism. As each class and each individual 
fights for his own hand, he will find that the lowest price at 
which he can obtain his own greatest freedom is the granting 
of equal liberty to others in certain departments of activity 
which experience, and experience alone, can demarcate. 

Whether we regard the question from a positive or a 
negative point of view — as the science of law or the science of 
liberty — we shall find that, in order to be of any value, our work 
must take the form of an inductive science ; and it must deal 
with the facts of social organisation, and not with high-sounding 
sentiments, however sublimely conceived — with the "JS'atur- 
recht " of the school of Savigny, not with the " droit naturel " 
of the school of Eousseau. Until this is conceded, we can have 
no stable foundation on which to base a sound and progressive 
individualism. 

Since liberty is the complement of law, it is impossible to 
understand liberty without understanding law. If the actions 
of individuals were so controlled and subordinated to the group 
as to leave no liberty whatever, we should have a state 
of absolute socialism. This is actually the case with the 



IX THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUALISM 303 

individual cells or groups of cells which together constitute the 
human body. The cells have, so to speak, " lost their identity." 
The welfare of the human being, or other highly-developed 
animal, is alone the end consciously aimed at and unconsciously 
approached, without reference to the separate interests of the 
cells of which he is made up. This is absolute socialism, and 
we must therefore beware of reasoning too much concerning 
social matters by analogy. If, on the other hand, the welfare 
of the group as a whole is absolutely ignored, and there is no 
combined or organised action to interfere with the separate 
interests of the individuals composing it, then we have absolute 
anarchy. This is precisely the case with many races of wild 
animals, especially the Carnivora. The welfare of the race as 
a group or whole is ignored, and the units alone are considered. 
Thus we may take a tiger as representing in his person absolute 
socialism and absolute anarchy — socialism in his internal 
relations, anarchy in his external relations. If we take tiger- 
kind as the whole, and tigers as the units of which it is made 
up, we see that there is an anarchic relation between the whole 
and the parts. If we take a tiger as the whole and the cells 
(which in the remote past were individuals having separate 
feelings and interests) as the units of which it is made up, we 
see that there is a socialistic relation between the whole and 
the parts. 

The whole history of civilisation is the history of a struggle 
to establish a relation between society and its units, between 
the whole and its parts, which is neither absolute socialism nor 
absolute anarchy ; but a state in which, by action and reaction 
of each upon each, such an adaptation shall take place, that the 
welfare of the whole and that of the units shall eventually 
become coincident and not antagonistic. Such is the problem 
of civilisation, of the development of the hyper - organism ; 
integration without impairing the individuality of the compon- 
ent units. The final result to which we shall ever approximate, 
but never attain, will be perfect civil liberty, or the greatest 
liberty which is compatible with the utmost wellbeing of 
society as a whole ; and perfect law, or such subordination of 
the individual will to that of society as may be compatible 
with the utmost wellbeing of the individual. 



304 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

The outcome of these reflections seems to be, that just as 
from parental sympathy springs State interference, which when 
developed casts off every shred of sympathy and antipathy, 
even to the extent of awarding to Shylock his pound of flesh, 
so from special interference, through a long process of generalisa- 
tion and friction, springs law, which in its final development is 
as incommensurable in terms of justice as is an oak-tree in 
terms of gravitation and molecular repulsion. Growing out of 
justice, as the living, thinking animal grows (or grew) out of 
inorganic matter, it cannot be resolved by man into its 
component elements. And the process is going on around us 
to-day. 

While then we may say that the law is a fairly coherent body 
of rules prohibiting the exercise of certain kinds of force (superior 
faculties) in certain classes of cases, it is not possible to say 
offhand, or to discover on paper, what those kinds of force are, 
or what are the classes of cases in which their exercise is pro- 
hibited. This can only be done by a careful and exhaustive 
examination of the laws themselves, by subjecting them to a 
searching analysis, by a scientific instead of a popular and super- 
ficial classification of their matter, and in short by a process of 
rigid reduction. 

Thus are we brought to a position the very opposite of 
that taken up by those who would test every law by the 
standard of justice. We have reached the standpoint of Ben- 
tham, who cared nothing for vapourings about justice, but who 
would test every law by its effects on the welfare of society. 
(It is true he substituted the welfare of the greatest number 
for the welfare of the group ; but this is immaterial here.) 
We are in the same boat with those who, rejecting the appeal 
to abstract virtue as a test of the goodness or fitness of their 
actions, substitute the ultimate welfare of the individual. A 
practical test is as far from view as when we started. Hence 
the persistence with which the need should be insisted on for 
the thorough study of law in the concrete, and the, discovery, 
not the manufacture, of the true statical laws which are 
actually operative in societies ; of their tendency, and of the 
dynamical laws of their change and development. It is by 
the discovery of these laws that we shall find ourselves in 



IX THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUALISM 305 

possession of true and useful practical guides through the 
labyrinth of legislation and politics. We shall arrive at rules 
which are neither so simple as that enjoining an equal deal at 
cards, nor so vague and inapplicable as that which requires us 
to follow the effects of an action, down through its million 
ramifications, to the utmost ends of time. 

The art of politics is the application of the science of 
nomology to the concrete ; just as engineering is the application 
to human wants of the science of mechanics, and as navigation 
is one of the arts based on the science of astronomy. Until 
we have mastered the science we shall make but little progress 
with the corresponding art. Till Adam Smith laid the founda- 
tions of modern economics the fiscal policy of the Government 
was a game of perpetual see-saw between rival crotcheteers. 
All was rule of thumb. So is it to-day with the great question 
of liberty and law. Yesterday we were all free-traders and 
advocates of " let be " ; to-day we are on the highroad to 
socialism ; to-morrow the Fates only know where we shall be. 
The only cure for this policy of drift is a patient and intelli- 
gent study of nomology, whereby middle principles of practical 
application will be brought to light, and the absurd fallacies of 
social doctrinaires put to flight for ever. 



CHAPTEE X 

LAND-LAW EEFORMEES 

It is easier to diagnose a disease than to prescribe a remedy. 
Most persons admit that the land law of this country is not 
what it should be. But it does not in the least follow that 
the cure proposed by each of the army of quacks ready to 
prescribe for the malady is the best, or even a wholesome treat- 
ment. At the same time it is a mistake to speak of land-law 
reformers as if the term denoted a number of persons with a 
common aim. They detest the present system, and there their 
agreement ends. It is impossible to deal with them as a 
single body with definite plans, because as a rule they disagree 
among themselves on almost every point of the program. 
Furthermore, they seldom set forth their views as a whole ; 
and to pick out one proposal from one reformer and another 
from another would be manifestly unfair to both. Conse- 
quently in our endeavour to ascertain the opinions of this 
somewhat motley crew it is necessary to deal with them 
separately. I propose in this chapter to discuss the sugges- 
tions of a gentleman who has put himself prominently before 
the public in connection with what is called the Free Land 
League, and whose views on land-law reform are pretty clearly 
sketched in a lecture on the land question delivered some few 
years ago at the Oxford Eeform Club, and since published 
with the sanction and approval of a cabinet minister who 
has since passed out of public notice. At the time of the 
delivery of the lecture, Mr. C. A. Fyffe described himself as 
the Liberal candidate for the city of Oxford, and although the 
election has since taken place, he is still in a position (so far 



CHAP. X LAND- LA W REFORMERS 307 

as I know) to sustain that role. Commenting upon the plans 
set forth in the lecture, Sir Charles Dilke was not ashamed to 
write : " What may we expect with regard to the treatment 
of the land question in the next Parliament ? On this subject 
I will commend to notice a pamphlet which has been written 
by Mr. TyfTe, who is Liberal candidate for the city of Oxford, 
and who I hope will represent the city of Oxford. Mr. Fyffe 
in his pamphlet has discussed in a thoroughly practical way 
the difficulties of the agricultural interest in this country at 
the present time, and has shown methods for their solution 
which are deserving of much attention." I think Mr: Fyffe's 
views, though not altogether clear and definite, are shared by 
a considerable number of neo-radicals at the present time, and 
I am therefore of opinion that a careful examination of his 
proposed alteration of the law is not by any means a mere 
waste of time.^ 

Before prescribing a remedy, our social physician must 
needs diagnose the disease, and this he does through the mouth 
of an imaginary "intelligent foreigner." Unfortunately for 
the correctness of his diagnosis, the intelligence of the created 
cannot exceed that of his creator, and the foreigner is conse- 
quently a very unintelligent foreigner indeed. He expresses 
surprise at seeing the condition of a great manufacturing 
country unlike that of his own. He cannot understand large 
farming and its effects ; still less the necessary results of the 
introduction of machinery. Let him speak for himself: "I 
see substantial farmhouses with good useful buildings, and 
often with immense cornricks about them; but ... I do 
not see the little houses scattered about, that one might 
expect, or the frequent large villages that would be met with 
in any equally rich district on the mainland. . . . And when 
I go from your lonely country districts into your towns, I 
observe enormous over-crowding and over-competition." Mr. 
Fyffe and his foreigner are unable to see the economy of con- 
centration in the case of manufacture as opposed to the im- 
possibility of concentration in the case of agriculture. His 

^ What follows was originally written for and adopted by the Parliamentary 
Committee of the Liberty and Property Defence League, and was published by 
them under the title of Land^ 1885. 



3o8 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

foreigner is equally surprised to find that a population which 
exports millions of pounds' worth of manufactured goods should 
be obliged to import provisions. " I find," says he, " that you 
pay to the French and other nations annually the following 
sums: For butter, £12,000,000; for cheese, £5,000,000 ; for 
potatoes and vegetables, £4,000,000 ; for poultry and eggs 
£3,000,000. And I am not surprised that under such circum- 
stances the English people, conservative as they are, are now 
asking themselves whether there is not something in their land 
system which needs a good deal of amendment." 

The intelligent foreigner having pointed out the evils in a 
land system which, acre for acre, produces more food from the 
soil than is produced by any other system from the soil of any 
other country in the world, calls in the physician, Mr. C. A. 
Fyffe, whose " own ideas, such as they are, have been gathered 
in the course of some years' superintendence of corporate 
estates amounting to about seven thousand acres," and who has 
so far bungled his own affairs that he has now " the misfortune 
to be personally interested in a small landed property, of 
which," says he, " I have at present one hundred and fifty 
acres on my hands ; so that I address you to-night in the char- 
acter of a distressed agriculturist." 

What a spectacle for the gods ! The distressed agri- 
culturist, after hopelessly collapsing under the load of one 
hundred and fifty acres, boldly comes forward and volunteers 
to undertake the management of the whole land of the country. 
But then, what city clerk does not know exactly how to smash 
the Mahdi, or to drive the Eussians back beyond Sarakhs ? 
The only difference in the cases is that somehow the city clerk 
does not succeed in propounding his views from the shoulders 
of a cabinet minister, that is all. 

However, Mr. Fyffe begins well. It was doubtless a 
revelation to the reformers to learn that " there is no law of 
primogeniture, except when a man dies without a will." The 
previous belief may be inferred, namely, that every landowner 
is by law compelled to leave the whole of his realty to his 
eldest son. Another disillusion awaited them when the news 
was to be announced that perpetual entail was also a bogey of 
the reformer's imagination, having been practically knocked on 



X LAND-LA W REFORMERS 309 

the head as far back as the days of the Ked and White Koses. 
Surely the reformers' occupation was gone ! 

At the same time, while admitting that the custom of 
primogeniture is an arguable question, it is possible to differ 
from Mr. Fyffe on the wisdom of altering the law in case of 
intestacy. In all such cases law should follow custom, other- 
wise great injustice may be done. For example, out of a 
hundred landowners one forgets or neglects to make his will, 
or by some accident or fraud the will cannot be found. 
Meantime he has made careful provision for all his younger 
sons and daughters, setting some up in business at great 
expense and settling large sums on others at marriage — all 
with the intention of leaving the land to his eldest son. 
Such is the belief of all, such the expectation of all. Is it 
just to disappoint these expectations and to leave the eldest 
son not the richest but the poorest of the family ? N'o ; the 
excellence of all laws relating to intestacy depends on their 
strict observance of the prevalent customs. In the words of 
Mr. Justice Stephen : " Laws ought to be adjusted to the habits 
of society, and not to aim at remoulding them. ... If the 
law deviates from these guiding principles it becomes a 
nuisance." Alter the custom if you can, Mr. Fyffe, but in 
the name of justice and common sense leave the law alone. 
As to family settlements, if there is nothing more to be urged 
against them than the lame economic arguments brought by, 
the lecturer, they may safely be left to take care of themselves. 
Perhaps, however, this is the place to remind the great school 
of reform by State interference, that whatever of evil (and of 
good) there may be in the present curious system of limited 
entails, by means of disentailing assurances and resettlements, 
it is mostly due to the action of the State in standing virtually 
as trustee for or protector of a non-existent person. And before 
proposing any new law for doing away with the effect of this 
abnormality (be it good or bad) it might be more consistent to 
remove the cause. The idea of a non-existent owner is not 
altogether natural, and whether it might not be dispensed 
with is an open and an arguable question. 

But Mr. Fyffe's cure is far more drastic, if less intelligible. 
He trusts that " the simple course will be taken of abolishing 



3IO INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

family settlements altogether." Until the meaning of this is 
made clearer it is useless to offer any observation on it. Will 
Mr. Fyffe tell us how he proposes to make the proprietorship 
of land everywhere ownership in fee simple ? Is he also pre- 
pared to abolish trusts altogether ? 

When we are told that all mortgages and charges on land 
" ought to be made public, and to be registered in some Court 
open to public inspection," we readily assent ; but are at once 
met with the warning that to cede an inch is to lose an ell. 
" It is an open question whether in the public interest all 
mortgages and charges whatsoever on land should not be 
made null and void." If so, the sooner the question is 
closed again the better. Firstly, it is an impossibility. 
Whoever holds a valuable property can borrow on it, whatever 
the law may be as to the precise nature of the transaction. 
Secondly, if there is one form of credit which is open to fewer 
objections than any other, it is that highly expedient and 
useful arrangement for tiding over an emergency, by borrowing 
at a low rate of interest on what is practically absolute security. 
How many manufacturers have been saved from collapse in 
periods of depression and commercial crisis by the accident of 
holding estates which were never bought with such a view ? 
As for simplification of transfer, Mr. Fyffe has nothing to say 
to it, except that the abstract of title would be cheaper and 
less bulky if it were not for these charges and mortgages. 

So far there is nothing either very startling or very 
original in all these suggestions. Indeed the whole subject 
of land ownership is a difficult one, not to be dealt with by 
rule of thumb or by uninstructed persons. Instead of raking 
up and refurbishing the rusty old weapons of Owenite law- 
tinkers, Mr. Fyffe might do better service if he would rummage 
in the dustiest corners of Oxford libraries and contrive to 
unearth some of the lectures delivered there seven hundred and 
fifty years ago, in which abundant evidence will be found that 
the foundations of law lie beneath the surface, and that in the 
learned discussions of the glossators and scholastic jurists are 
more likely to be found the true solutions of these problems than 
in the amateur superficialities of nineteenth century demagogues. 

To do our author justice, he is not satisfied to follow in 



LAND- LA W REFORMERS 



the footsteps of the land reformers of the last generation. 
That is not enough for him. He opens up a prospect of 
changes based, not upon freedom or its semblance, but on 
State interference. In plain words, Mr. Fyffe is a State 
socialist. " After all," he says, " we are great communists in 
this country ; " from which fact (melancholy or the reverse) 
the inference is drawn, why not let us be more communistic ? 
Possibly this argument has weight with some who would 
shrink from drawing a parallel inference from the allegation 
that after all we are to a certain extent dishonest people in 
this country. Anyhow, whether in other matters communism 
is good or bad, there can be no doubt that it must be good in 
the matter of land, which we cannot surely bring ourselves to 
believe to be a " purely commercial object." Phraseology of 
this sort is invincible. How can any one prove or even argue 
that land is a " purely commercial object " ? What does it 
mean ? The explanation throws no light on the subject: 
"Land," we are told, "has two characteristics, which taken 
together distinguish it from any other commodity. The use of 
a portion of it is absolutely indispensable, and it is not capable 
of being increased." One would have thought that the use of 
a portion of air, water, food, clothing, and a variety of other 
things (not of course including common sense) was absolutely 
indispensable, and certainly as to some of these it is true that 
they are not " capable of being increased." Water and air for 
example. At the same time what does it signify to the wretch 
to whom these said things are indispensable whether or not 
they are capable of being increased, if he himself is not 
capable of getting them. A man in want of a loaf derives 
no consolation from being told that bread is one of those 
things which are capable of being increased, or even that it 
falls into Mill's third class of commodities. But is not land 
capable of being increased to all practical intents and purposes ? 
Land, which is rendered doubly productive, is 'practically doubled 
in quantity. But leaving that on one side, is it not a fact that 
within the last two centuries the English people have increased 
their land by millions of square miles, in spite of the quaking 
insular policy of those who, with punctilious respect for the 
proprietary rights of Eed Indians over their hunting-grounds, 



312 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

evince the most callous unscrupulousness in curtailing and 
even destroying the proprietary rights of their own fellow- 
countrymen ? It is true that if a man with one acre of land 
wants another, he cannot have it in the same place ; he must 
move : but what does it matter what form his labour takes, 
whether it consists in bringing goods to himself or carrying 
himself to the goods ? That is to say, by the application of 
labour land can be increased — and by land is meant useful 
land, valuable land. At all events at the present time there 
are more acres in the world waiting to be claimed, cleared, and 
utilised, than there are people anxious to claim them. When 
the planet is thickly populated with civilised people we will 
undertake to reopen this discussion with Mr. Fyffe. Just now 
we must let his theory pass and turn to his practical proposals 
based thereon, for he himself trusts less to his metaphysical 
arguments than to the brute force of the many. Says he : 
"We know perfectly well that the accumulation of landed 
property in single hands might easily reach such a degree that 
the nation would not put up with it ; and I therefore " (not be 
it observed for any speculative reasons) " make no apology for 
assuming that the public interest ought even now to be the 
first principle in regulating our land laws, and that private 
property in land must be subject to such limitation as the 
public interest dictates." Would not this argument hold with 
respect to the accumulation of corn in single hands, which 
actually did take place with much effect at one time ? ' And 
are we not therefore to " assume that private property in corn 
must be subject to, etc. ?" Torestalling and regrating were 
terms familiar to the ears of our forefathers, but we vainly 
hoped we had got past those days of paternal government. 

Wait a moment. Bo we know perfectly well that landed 
property in single hands might easily reach such a degree ? It 
has not reached that point yet, and the tendency is even now 
in the opposite direction. Again, is it not a contingency 
equally probable in the case of other kinds of property ? 
Suppose some half-witted or misanthropic person contrived to 
collect at any cost all the extant works of some great painter 
with the malicious object of burning them. Would the nation 
" put up with it " ? And if not, what course would it adopt ? 



X LAND-LAW REFORMERS 313 

And furthermore, does this possible danger justify us in 
assuming (without any apology too) that " the public interest 
ought even now to be the first principle in regulating our 
laws relating to personalty of a kind strictly limited in 
quantity"? After all, it would be a harmless proposition. 
What is meant by it ? No one denies that property in land 
must be held subject to such limitation as the public interest 
dictates. What one objects to is Mr. Fyffe's limitation. 
Even Oxford reformers must have heard of compulsory 
purchase of land for purposes of public utility, of railway con- 
cessions and the like. If it can be shown to the general 
satisfaction that any square yard of this country could be 
bought by the State with advantage, there is nothing in the 
laws or the constitution to prevent such compulsory purchase 
from being effected. The only dispute between the reformers 
and ordinary mortals is as to the expediency of purchasing the 
land against the will of the holder without any conceivable 
cause shown. 

The whole question lies in a nutshell. Is a system of 
land tenure, such as we now have, under which the holder 
enjoys undefined rights over the land subject to the public 
right of purchase at full market value — is this a good system , 
or not ? The reformers say no, and each reformer has a 
project of his own which is better. Mr. George would tax 
landlords about 90 per cent, of their rent, and let them 
alone.* Professor Wallace would buy them out by degrees over 
a period of about twenty years, by which they would be 
robbed of the difference between the value of the freehold and 
that of a twenty years' lease. Mr. Hyndman would expropriate 
them at once without compensation or so much as " by your 
leave." But we are now concerned with Mr. Fyffe's project. 
His plan is not wanting in that simplicity which characterises 
the systems of Fourier, of Henry George, and of Prince 
Krapotkine. 

The central idea is to empower any corporate body or 
single individual lacking land to take it on payment of a 
reasonable sum to the owner. " I would therefore suggest," 
says our author, " that an individual or a company requiring 
land for any useful purpose, and not necessarily affecting the 



314 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

public at large, shall have the right of going before the local 
Land Court and obtaining an order for the compulsory sale of 
the land." It is true that the object alleged must be one that 
is beneficial to the neighbourhood, and that no substantial 
objection can be adduced by the landed proprietor, whatever a 
siibstantial objection may be — most certainly the objection that 
the land belongs to him and that he wishes to keep it will not be 
accepted as substantial. Why not ? Because " he who needs 
ground for his own occupation seems primd facie to be a more 
suitable owner than one who lets it to another. It is not, 
however, necessary to dwell upon the grounds which would 
naturally influence the Land Courts in the exercise of their 
discretion." Certainly not. And now a word upon this 
argument of primd facie suitability. Does it apply to the 
horses of a livery stable-keeper ? Is the person who wishes to 
ride one of such horses clearly a more suitable owner than he 
who merely lets it out for hire, and ought he therefore to have 
the power to purchase it at a fair figure ? Again, as to 
suitability, there can be no doubt that a hungry man would be 
a more suitable owner of a cake than the confectioner who puts 
it in the window for sale ; and really one fails to see why 
this test should not at once decide the ownership apart from 
any vulgar question of price, reasonable or otherwise. 

The lecturer has not got quite so far as that yet, and he leans 
to the view that some compensation should be made to the 
owner. First let us see on what basis this compensation is to 
be calculated, and then let us follow the economic reasoning 
by which it is supported. Now the principle of valuation by 
which the Land Court is to be guided is the beautiful and 
elastic principle of equity. " By an equitable value, I do not 
mean either an agricultural value on the one side or a fancy 
value on the other, but such a price as an owner desiring to 
sell would accept from an ordinary purchaser." Now who is 
the thought-reader that is to find out what price one who does 
not want to sell would accept if he did want to sell ? One has 
heard too of men so desirous of realising that they have 
parted with really marketable things in a hurry for "an old 
song." Then how desirous of selling is the owner to be 
pictured by the Land Court thought-reader ? Is he to be 



X LAND-LAW REFORMERS 315 

anxious to sell, or willing to sell, or prepared to consider a 
good offer ? But before solving these problems we must learn 
what it is which the landowner has to sell, or ought to be 
taken as having to sell. How are we to find out, not what the 
rent actually is, but what, morally speaking, it ought to be ? 

" I think we ought to proceed in this way," says our teacher : 
" first the labourer should be kept in decent comfort " (please 
define) ; " then the landlord should have a trifling payment for, 
as it were, putting the tenant in a position to use his capital." 
And how much might this be we are anxious to learn ; and 
here is the answer, " Say, the value of what the land would 
grow uncultivated." The thought-reader is non-plussed ; we 
must have recourse to the Wandering Jew this time. What 
sort of land was this before a spade was stuck into it ? Was 
it forest, or moor, or marsh, or barren rock, or was it perchance 
under the waves of the sea ? And in any case what would 
the market value of its produce have been at that time ? 
Were there any inhabitants in the neighbouring country, and 
did they build with timber, or burn peat, or did they graze 
sheep or cattle ? " Nonsense," shriek the reformers, " nobody 
asked the value of what the land did grow before it was 
cultivated, but the value of what it would now grow un- 
cultivated." Now this in no way alters the question ; for at 
what point in its history is the piece of land to be supposed 
to have begun to be cultivated ? And what is cultivation ? 
The richest acre of golden wheat at harvest-time has not been 
cultivated for weeks and months. The poorest acre on the 
wooded hillside is being cultivated when the leaves fall in 
autumn, or else pasture land is not cultivated at all. But wordy 
speculations of this kind make such a dust that it is a reUef to 
get back to something definite. Mr. Fyffe is prepared to be 
generous, or at least to admit that generosity might be shown. 
After proceeding as aforesaid, he allows a reasonctble percentage 
to the landlord and the farmer on the actual capital they have 
put on to the land, and a fair return to the farmer for his work and 
superintendence ; and then, " if there is something over after- 
wards, the landlord might have jpart of it as purely unearned 
income, over and above what he may fairly claim." What 
that is we have seen. At this point one feels strongly tempted 



3i6 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

to commend to Mr. Fyffe's careful perusal a little work written 
about seventy years ago by one David Eicardo, and entitled, On 
the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. He will 
find therein some elementary truths simply stated which will 
cause him much surprise ; amongst other matters he will find 
an explanation of rents, and how they are arrived at. He will 
find that the wages of the labourer are settled by circumstances 
over which neither landlord nor farmer has any control ; he 
will find that after paying these wages, the normal profits of 
the farmer, together with the return of his outlay, are next 
deducted from the gross produce of the land, and finally if 
there is anything left over (on an average of years), it passes 
to the landlord as rent. 

Now, this is precisely the state of things for which the 
heart of the candidate is yearning. He is after all in the 
same boat with his constituents, who are still buckling on 
their armour for an onslaught upon perpetual entails and 
compulsory primogeniture. What he is struggling to bring 
about is the existing custom of the country. But it is no 
satisfaction, they say, to live even in Paradise without knowing it. 

In order to bring the new order of things about, the first 
requisite is of course a District Land Court. Without this it 
is clear there could be no means devised of giving one party to 
a contract the best of the bargain, and that, it need hardly be 
said, is the ultimate object of the reform. Having got the 
indispensable machine, how is it going to be worked, and what 
is it going to turn out ? Under the heading of " necessary 
changes in the law between landlord and tenant " (we had no 
idea there was any law so situated), we find exposed to view 
our three old friends from Ireland, known as the three F's. 
There they are in all their hideous nakedness, just as might 
have been predicted. Manufactured for Irish consumption 
only, it was not to be expected that they would long be 
excluded from the English market. 

1. Eixity of Tenure : " No tenant to be removed from his 
holding without the permission of a District Land Court." It 
is unnecessary to examine the grounds on which the court 
may refuse such permission, for it is enough that such require- 
ment at once creates a dual ownership. 



X LAND-LAW REFORMERS 317 

2. Fair Eents : " The Land Court must have the power of 
fixing rents in cases of dispute and of reducing them even in 
the case of existing leases." This again is plain speaking, and 
requires no further elucidation or comment. But when this 
interference with contract engagements is justified by the act 
of " the English Court of Chancery, in interfering with and 
setting aside those clauses in mortgages which gave the 
mortgagee absolute rights over the mortgaged estate in case of 
default of payment," we may be permitted to doubt whether 
Mr. Fyffe has any clear idea of the principle on which equity 
of redemption is based. Perhaps the Oxford reformers will 
tell us whether the mortgagor or the mortgagee is the pro- 
prietor in the exact sense of the term. However, these 
supposed analogies had better be avoided by those whose 
acquaintance with legal philosophy is of so dubious a character. 

3. Tree Sale : " The farmer should have the right of 
selling his tenancy to any one whom he chooses, subject to the 
landlord's right to urge any objection to the new tenant before 
the District Land Court." In support of this contention our 
guide again displays an extraordinary ignorance of history. 
" Of course," says he, " if the tenant is to be regarded as a sort 
of feudal retainer of the landlord, it sounds shocking that he 
should have the right of nominating a successor." I>row this 
is just the case in which the nomination of a successor, so far 
from sounding " shocking," was, as a matter of fact and history, 
a thing of everyday occurrence. And what is to be the 
landlord's safeguard against having any sort of vagabond thrust 
upon him for a tenant ? Simply this ; the incoming tenant is 
to be " put upon his oath as to his means, his character, and 
his qualifications." Now, supposing our author put upon his 
oath as to his qualifications as a land reformer, should we be 
justified in stigmatising his probable answers as perjury ? The 
spectacle of the incoming tenant on his oath as to his means 
would not perhaps be very striking ; but when it came to his 
character, unless the whole thing is to be a mere formal farce, 
there would be some interesting situations. " Are you a sober 
man?" — "Mostly, your Honour; sixdaysout of the seven, anyhow." 
— " Are you strictly honest ? " — " Well I never take anything 
that doesn't belong to me unless I want it very badly." — " Do 



31 8 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

you always adhere to the truth ? " — " For choice, your Honour, 
when there is no harm in it." — " That will do ; you can pass ; 
— the next incoming tenant." 

So much for the three F's, to which a fourth is added, 
evidently necessary to the well -working of the other three; 
and this is the opinion of the lecturer, or of some equally 
exalted and disinterested person, on all questions of " fairness," 
" reasonableness " and so forth. May we venture to call this 
fourth F " Fyffe's opinion " ? For instance, in case of 
compulsory sale the landlord might not get as much as he 
could wish, nor yet the market value of his freehold, nor even 
as much as the purchaser would be willing to give for it if 
pressed ; but he would get as much as it is " fairly worth." 
Here the fourth F comes in. Who is to judge w^hat it is 
fairly worth ? Apparently there is no other test than " Fyffe's 
opinion." Again, when the municipality of a growing town 
takes up the land around it, neither an agricultural value nor 
a fancy value is to be paid, but an equitable value. Now, 
what is the measure of this equitable value ? Apply the 
fourth F. There is no other course open. Yet again, before 
paying his rent, the farmer is to deduct a "fair return for his 
work and superintendence." "What is a " fair return " ? 
Apply the fourth F. It solves at once even greater problems. 
What is the proper rental of the whole country ? " When 
landlords complain of the present bad times, I ask myself 
whether the good times, which they unconsciously make their 
standard of comparison, were not the result of injustice, and 
whether the rents they then received would not have been 
impossible if there had been anything like a fair distribution 
of the profits of agriculture." Exactly ; but then landlords do 
not yet understand the principle of the fourth F. They think 
that an article is worth what it will fetch in the open market. 
When they shall have mastered the four F's they will doubtless 
cease to bewail the agricultural depression, so far as it con- 
cerns themselves. They will adopt the stoical attitude of the 
owner of one hundred and fifty acres, who thus gives his mis- 
fortunes the go-by : " Therefore, in so far as the land difficulty 
merely means the unpleasantness of landlords not getting so 
large a rent as formerly" (let us pardon the style, in considera- 



X LAND-LAW REFORMERS 319 

tion of the sentiment !) " which is what it means to a good many 
representatives of the landed interest in the House of Commons, 
I put it by, as a matter which may indeed excite individual 
commiseration, but does not call for public attention." 

Before following our public-spirited teacher from country 
to town, attention should be drawn to one passage in his 
lecture to the reformers which is really significant enough. 
" During the last few years statistics show that nearly a million 
acres have been transferred from the plough to grass. But now 
comes a very striking fact, and one on which a great deal 
hinges. Though a million acres have been turned into grass, 
there is no increase in the number of cattle. The meaning of 
this is, that the farmer's capital is gone, and that he has not 
the means of getting a sufficiency of stock, even when the 
land is laid down in grass. This is only one out of a multitude 
of facts all pointing in one direction." True, but in which 
direction ? After years of " beneficent legislation," from the 
Agricultural Holdings Act at the top down to the Bill for 
defining a rabbit-hole at the bottom, what do we find ? Why, 
that the sense of insecurity brought about by all these 
interferences with freedom of contract, and all these violations 
of the sanctity of property, has resulted in shortness of credit 
and dwindling capital. There is nothing new in all this, but 
our modern reformers are just where the great thinkers left 
them at the beginning of the century, and must be met with 
the same old weapons. 

I have already referred to Eicardo ; let me now quote 
Bentham : " If the legislator find it good to take away from a 
particular class of citizens a fifth part of their revenue, why 
stop there ? Why not take away another fifth part, and still 
another ? If the first reduction answered its end, a further 
reduction will answer it in the same proportion ; and if the 
measure is good in one case, why should it be bad in the 
other ? Wherever we stop, it is necessary to have a reason 
for stopping, but whatever reason prevents the second step will 
be just as good to prevent the first. This operation is exactly 
the same as diminishing rents under the pretext that the 
proprietors are useless consumers, and the farmers productive 
labourers. If you shake the principle of security as respects 



320 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

one class of citizens you shake, it for all. The bundle of rods 
is its emblem." 

Though this is the language which Bentham addressed to 
French " reformers " of nearly a century ago, it is equally 
appropriate to their English imitators of to-day. 

It is merely a question of time. Give but free scope to 
" beneficent legislation " and sooner or later every trade and 
interest in the country will attain to the ruined condition of 
British Agriculture. To take but one example, it is a fact 
that the Mines' Eegulation Act alone threw no less than 
63,000 persons out of work within less than six years of its 
coming into operation. In other words, while it is hard to 
show that it has been the means of saving ten lives a year, 
it is a fact that indirectly it has killed at the rate of ten 
thousand. But the appetite has been whetted. The blood 
has been tasted and the trembling capitalist shall himself be 
thrust aside in the rush for more. 

" Si torrida parvus 
Venit in ora cruor, rediunt rabiesque furorque ; 
Admonitaeqne tument gustato sanguine fauces, 
Fervet, et a trepido vix abstinet ora magistro." 

Mr. Tyffe clinches his argument in favour of the four F's 
with a little anecdote which, so far as it proves anything, shows 
that if you want to make extensive alterations in your farm, 
you had better take it on a long lease. But, as an illustration 
of the kind of stuff that is used in certain quarters as a 
substitute for argument, it is worth quoting : — 

"' One of the best managed farms I know is conducted by two partners, 
one of whom had always been a local farmer, while the other had been in 
business in London, and, after leaving London, took with him, I believe, a 
considerable capital into the country. There, instead of setting up the farm- 
ing business entirely on his own account, he entered into partnership with 
the local man, and so combined his own capital with the skill and experience 
of a professional farmer. Their holding was a sort of oasis in the midst 
of an impoverished neighbourhood. Unfortunately, however, they were 
so imprudent as to be content with an annual tenancy under a peer, 
thinking that his lordship would never disturb them. My lord, however, 
found it desirable the other day to sell his land, and the result is that 
the partners find themselves under a new landlord, whom they cannot 
get on with, and they have, in consequence, to leave the place. In this 
case the inducement to the capitalist to put his money into the concern 



X LAND-LAW REFORMERS 321 

was the supposed security of tenure under a peer — this proved imaginary ; 
and I contend that it is necessary to make such security not imaginary 
but realj and that this can most effectually be done by such changes in 
the law as those which I have sketched." 

This same anecdote has, no doubt, been pigeon-holed for 
use as an argument for the abolition of the House of Lords, and 
may do good service in many other causes. There are, how- 
ever, two considerations which seem to throw some doubt on 
the story ; one is the improbability that two men enjoying the 
friendship and advice of our teacher should be so stupid as to 
have dealings of any kind " with a peer," and the other is the 
circumstance that " my lord " should have found it desirable to 
sell his land. That a peer, having once held land, should, 
under any conceivable pressure, have been induced to relinquish 
his hold, must have struck the reformers as extremely un- 
historical ; the theory being that he gradually tends to elbow 
out all his neighbours and accumulate all the land in his own 
hands. But let that pass. The point is that the farmer persists 
in paying too much in rent, and the consequences are manifold. 
To begin with, all the agricultural labourers in many villages 
are old men. Whether they began life as old men, or have 
been reduced to that condition by the scantiness of their wage, 
we are not clearly told. Or it may be the absence of young 
people that has provoked the remark ; if so, perhaps a peep 
into the Board Schools would explain the matter, where the 
children are still to be found, not, it is true, learning much of 
their future work, but plodding steadily on in the direction of 
the differential calculus. So that when we are triumphantly 
asked, " Whose fault is this ? " some might answer it is the 
fault of the reformers, and others might go so far as to single 
out Mr. Forster or Mr. Mundella as mainly responsible. But 
the true explanation, according to the pamphlet before us, is 
the rent. " We come back to the real mainspring of the 
whole concern — because the farmer has agreed to pay too 
much in rent." The question now is. How are we to smash 
this " mainspring of the whole concern " ? It is partly to be 
done by reducing the hours of labour, and " the reduction of the 
hours of labour, I suppose, can only be accomplished by an 
agricultural labourers' trades union {sic I) ; but the object is a 

Y 



322 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

right one and a possible one. It is a right one because the 
social improvement of the labourer is all but hopeless if he has 
to work twelve hours a day ; and it is a possible one, because 
there is a margin of unearned profit in the shape of landlord's 
rent, which may perfectly well be diminished without inflicting 
a wrong on anybody." The attention of all property owners 
and all honest men is called to the fact not that such stuff can 
be written and is written to-day without danger of criminal 
prosecution, but that it is written with the approval and 
blessing of a cabinet minister, who commends it to notice, 
after asking the question, " What may we expect with regard 
to the treatment of the land question in the next Parliament ? " 
And while all this is going on in the country, what is 
going to be done in the towns, for " people have of late begun 
to understand that the land question is a town question as 
well as a country question " ? And why a town question ? 
One reason is, we are told, " because the action of our land 
system has been to drive people unnecessarily out of the 
country, and so artificially to increase the overcrowding of our 
towns, and the misery resulting from over-competition." In 
other words, the condition of the labourer in the country is so 
dreadful that he is driven to take refuge in the towns, which 
are already overcrowded and full of misery. The misery and 
wretchedness of the towns is great, but that of the country is 
greater ; so much greater that the towns are relatively gardens 
of Eden, and are a positive attraction for the peasants. Now 
if this is so, we should expect to find that the lot of the 
working classes all round is going from bad to worse. But 
without endorsing all that is urged to the contrary by Mr. 
Giffen and the optimists, it may safely be asserted that the 
condition of the working classes is, at any rate, no worse than 
it was forty years ago. Hence we must find another reason 
for the observed infiux of the country population into the 
towns. And that reason surely is not far to seek. Any one 
with more knowledge of recent events and better powers of 
observation than Mr. Fyffe's intelligent foreigner, is aware that 
the economic working of great manufactures requires local 
concentration. The times have altered since every village 'had 
its hand weaver and every cottage lass was expected to " mind 



X LAAW-LA W REFORMERS 323 

her wheel " ; and only persons of the type of the intelligent 
Maori or Hottentot can be pardoned for lamenting that " it is 
difficult to draw employers of labour away from the large 
towns, and to induce them to start their works in new places." 
Very difficult indeed ! 

Another reason why the land question has become a town 
question is because of the system of building-leases, so we are 
told. And this is how it operates. " Any one wanting a house 
must go either to one of the ground landlords or to some 
builder to whom they have let the land." That is a bad job 
to begin with. Why should not the ground landlord come to 
him ? Then he has to pay more than the agricultural rental 
of the site. Preposterous ! Surely land in Lombard Street or 
Cornhill ought to be let for twenty-seven shillings an acre. 
As a matter of fact it fetches a trifle more in the market, but 
that is on account of the rapacity of the landlord, and must be 
put a stop to. For, after all, " the value of the land has 
increased through the industry of the people, not usually 
through the merit of the landlord." But this is not the worst. 
Kot only will this landlord make you pay rent during the term 
of your lease, but when it is over " he will make you pay to 
renew the lease." Incredible ! " Of course this is particularly 
hard on tradesmen and men of business." 

It is a pity the reformers could not have been left to 
ruminate on the woes of the landless in general, without 
having their attention distracted by the harrowing narrative of 
their guide's own misfortunes. We have seen how the luckless 
lecturer bungled his farm of 150 acres, to such an extent that 
not one of the reformers . offered at any price to take it off his 
hands and set them free for the great work of land-law reform. 
Well, this ill-fortune (to use a euphemism) follows him up to 
town. He buys a house, the landlord of which and a spec- 
ulative builder, some mortgagees, a loan company, some bankers, 
and " a whole army of money-lenders and lawyers " had got so 
hopelessly mixed up and tied in a knot, that when he came to 
take part in the conveyance, counting " the surviving partners 
of the bank and the representatives of those who were dead, 
there were no less than five firms of solicitors making profits 
out of the sale of the house, to say nothing of the profits made 



324 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

by the bank and the loan company. Of course somebody must 
pay for all this, and that somebody is the purchaser." There 
it is ! Alas ! that somebody was the lecturer. ISTo wonder the 
land question has become a town question. Such is Mr. Fyffe's 
luck, that if he went for a cruise in the Mediterranean the 
land question would straightway become a sea question. If he 
went up in a balloon, it would become an air question ; and if 
he went to another place, it would become a " burning question." 
It may be some comfort to Mr. Fyffe to learn that the un- 
fortunate somebody who has to pay for the luxury of five firms 
of solicitors, is not the purchaser but the vendor. 

Meantime the question for the reformers is, how to get 
rid of all these crying scandals. Fortunately it is not a 
difficult task. On the contrary, " the remedy as between 
tenant and landlord seems simple enough, namely, that pro- 
posed by Mr. Broadhurst's Bill, empowering every tenant with 
more than twenty years' lease unexpired, to acquire, on equitable 
terms " (remember the fourth E), "the fee simple of his holding." 
Could anything be simpler ? You hire a horse for a ride, Mr. 
Broadhurst gets his Bill through Parliament, and, hey, presto ! 
you acquire the fee simple of the horse. Everybody would be 
happy. In the case of the leasehold estate "the landlord 
would get what his reversionary interest is fairly worth " — in 
the opinion of Mr. Eyffe ; and the tenant, " if he made the place 
more valuable by his industry, would get the fruits of his 
labour." One cannot analyse the fourth F at every turn. 
The reader will see that if the landlord did not value the 
reversion at something more than the figure based on a calcula- 
tion of the rent, he would clearly have sold the premises alto- 
gether and invested the proceeds in something else. Those 
who have taken the trouble to wade through the Leaseholders' 
(Facilities of Purchase of Fee Simple) Bill will be inclined to 
think that its proper title would be Freeholders' Spoliation 
Bill. The objection has been raised to the Bill that if all the 
occupants in a certain respectable locality were independent 
freeholders, some one maliciously disposed might erect a 
frantic piece of architecture enough to scare the birds and 
make the horses shy. But we are now told that this objec- 
tion " could be easily remedied by making the ownership of 



X LAND-LA W REFORMERS 325 

each tenant subject to the same stipulations against nuisances 
or annoyances which existed in his lease, and giving to other 
occupants of the estate the same power of enforcing those 
provisions which originally belonged to the ground landlord." 
Town dwellers who know the difficulty of building a new wing 
or throwing out a billiard-room or conservatory, owing to the 
grumbling punctiliousness of neighbours, jealous of their rights 
of light and prospect, even after the landlord's consent has 
been obtained, will hardly look forward with glee to the time 
when all the fellow-occupants of the estate are to have the 
same power of enforcing those provisions which originally be- 
longed to the ground landlord. Besides, what is the bond 
which is to hold these fellow -occupants together ? Is the 
memory of the old estate and its boundaries to be handed 
down for ever ? And if not, how is a householder to answer 
himself the question. Who is my neighbour ? Perhaps on 
inquiry this " simple plan " is not quite so simple as it looks 
at first sight, apart from the question of its honesty. But even 
this is not enough. " I think," says Mr. Fyffe, "that the Lease- 
hold Enfranchisement Bill does not go far enough." Here, 
again, he is a little mixed. There never was any such Bill 
before Parliament as the one named. Mr. Broadhurst's Bill was 
entitled " Leaseholders' (Facilities of Purchase of Pee Simple) 
Bill." There was, it is true, a Bill brought in in 1884, entitled 
" Leaseholders' Enfranchisement Bill," not indeed by Mr. Broad- 
hurst, but by Lord Eandolph Churchill. Has Mr. Pyffe read 
either ? And if so, to which does he refer when he says that 
it does not go far enough ? He proceeds : " In my humble 
opinion, the community, say the municipality of a growing 
town, ought to have the power to take up the land round it, 
just as a railway company might, at an equitable value " (fourth 
P) " to be fixed by some public authority. The community, as 
it expanded, would then be its own landlord ; and the increased 
value in the land would fall to the benefit of those whose 
activity had produced it, and not to the landlord, who has sat 
still." [NTow, assuming the market value to be paid to the 
owner (anything less is robbery), the speculating community, 
say municipality or commune, will either gain or lose by the 
transaction. According to Mr. Pyffe, it will always gain ; 



326 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap, x 

such is the inference. This being so, why does not Mr. Fyffe 
get up a company for buying up all these belts or areas round 
growing towns ? He need not pocket the increase. After 
deducting his expenses, he can present the balance to the 
municipality and be put on the register of public benefactors 
forthwith. Is it that there are keen men with as good an eye 
for a rising market as himself, that deters him from under- 
taking this remunerative and philanthropic task, or is it the 
dread that his ill-luck will follow him even here? When 
bought up, this belt of land " might then either be built upon 
by the municipahty and let to tenants, or be sold in plots for 
the citizens to make their own buildings. There would be this 
further advantage, that the suburbs of growing towns would 
then be planned and laid out by some responsible authority." 
Now this " responsible authority " is just the party we wish to 
avoid. We know him better by the name of "jobbing 
ofacial." 

Municipal bodies have quite enough to do, and as some 
think far too much, without launching into the land speculat- 
ing and building trades. But as if this were not enough, they 
are to be empowered to advance money on loan out of local 
funds to persons anxious to keep a cow or grow fruit and 
vegetables ; otherwise where is the money to come from ? 
The labourer with the holding granted him by the municipality, 
"will want at least from £20 to £50 to make a fair start. 
I see nothing else for it." And the neo-radical's goal is reached 
at last. 

" Every Englislimaii is entitled in the last resort to have food, fire, and 
lodging provided for him in tlie workhouse out of tlie ratepayers' pockets, 
without the least chance of their getting anything back ; and I do not see 
that it is by any means so bad an application of public funds, if, instead 
of waiting till people are paupers, we lend, with due precautions for re- 
payment, in order to give a start to those who, in the absence of such assist- 
ance, will certainly live upon the public rates as paupers in their old age." 

Such is the outcome of the Oxford reformer's philosophy 
— one colossal scheme of national pauperism. 



CHAPTEK XI 

AN ANALYSIS OF SOCIALISM 

In a memorable speech delivered in the House of Lords on the 
3 1st of July 1885 — a speech that will live in the pages of his- 
tory when most other utterances of the session are buried in well- 
earned oblivion — Lord Wemyss divided socialists into three 
classes : the socialists of the street ; the socialists of the schools ; 
and the socialists of the senate. The first he summarily disposed 
of as hardly worthy of serious consideration. '' The socialism 
of the communist," said he, "may be treated very shortly. 
There are four very happy lines which I think accurately 
describe the communist : — 



« ( 



What is a communist ? One who has yearnings 

For equal division of unequal earnings : 

An idler or bungler, or both, lie is willing 

To fork out his penny and pocket your shilling ! ' 

That I believe to be a very fair description of a communist, 
with the exception that I greatly doubt his readiness to fork out 
his penny. Nevertheless, I have a great respect for him. He 
knows what he means. He means business. His business is 
the equal division of unequal earnings. There is no theory 
about him. He is a thoroughly practical man ; and one respects 
practical men." 

True ; but these are not the people with whom I here pro- 
pose to deal. There are the theorists — the socialists of the 
schools, of whom Mr. J. L. Joynes is one of the ablest expo- 
nents in this country. Of these Lord Wemyss uses a very 
different language. Says he : — " I come next to the socialism of 



328 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

the professor — the socialism of the schools. I^ow we live in 
a time when, perhaps more than in any other, men feel for 
the sufferings of their fellow-creatures. It is essentially an era 
of humanitarianism. Philosophers and professors in their 
writings are casting aside the old school of political economy 
and laissez-faire, and advocating State intervention as a cure 
for all evils. They look to the State to protect the weak 
against the strong, and to equalise the conditions of life. I 
believe, my lords, that all these attempts will end in signal 
failure, and that, in the long run, it will be proved that the 
older school of political economy is, on the whole, sounder, ay, 
and more humane, than that of the modern humanitarian school 
of philosophy." 

It is* this class of political thinkers with whom I propose 
to discuss the social problem in the present chapter. It must 
not be forgotten that the doctrines underlying neo-radicalism 
are the self-same doctrines which are openly expressed and 
consistently acted upon by the leaders of the party of scientific 
socialism. Hence, though few neo-radicals have either the 
courage or the education to lay down the first principles of 
their own policy, it behoves us, who find ourselves opposed to 
them at every turn, to learn from their unacknowledged leaders 
what these principles are. Probably the most compact, and 
also the most plausible epitome of socialist principles obtainable 
in this country, is Mr. Joynes's Catechism. It is simply written, 
and a'p'pears intelligible to ordinary readers. Por these reasons 
I propose to take it to pieces, to examine it in detail, and to 
expose the fallacies on which it is built up. It is contained in 
ten short chapters. Let us take them one by one. Chapter 
I. is entitled " Division of Toil." Mark the use of the word 
" toil." Adam Smith spoke of the division of labour ; others 
have made use of the expression division of work ; but Mr. 
Joynes chooses the word toil; it rhymes with moil, and 
it bespeaks a poetic pity for the toilers — the horny-handed sons 
of toil ! I mention this only because it is one of the 
socialistic tricks. The middle -class tradesmen are styled 
hourgeois, which is Prench for burgher or tow^nsman, but 
English ears are reminded of that sleek snob and fool, the 
bourgeois gentilhomme. It would be difficult to arouse 



XI AN ANAL YSIS OF SOCIALISM 329 

antipathy amongst English audiences for the stout burgher. 
Then the poor are called the proletariat, because the term 
recalls swarms of helpless little children, born without any 
request on their part to fight their way through this struggling 
world. It is all very touching, no doubt, but ad^ captandum 
phrases are not logic after all. 

The chapter about toil consists of fifteen short questions with 
the socialistic answers. With the first three it is not necessary 
to quarrel. But with the fourth answer begins the begging of 
the question. " How may these two sets of persons be roughly 
distinguished ? As employers and employed ; idlers and 
workers ; privileged and plundered ; or more simply still, as rich 
and poor." Here we have " employers," " idlers," " privileged," 
and "rich," used as synonymous terms. Every honest man 
knows that employers as a rule, so far from being idlers, work 
harder than their employees. Their work may be less disagree- 
able, and may (in some cases) occupy less time ; but taking 
quantity and quality together, they work far harder and do far 
more work. Their ability to do this has, in many cases, 
earned them the position of superiority which they enjoy. 
Then again, the poor are by no means, as a rule, addicted to 
work. They must earn their meals or starve, but beyond that 
they show, as a rule, very little taste for work. As for the 
allegation that the employers plunder the workers, it is simply 
an unfair way of describing a series of transactions which by a 
gross straining of language might be so put. The facts are, that 
the workman barters all prospective profits of his labour for a 
consideration in cash down. It is a foolish bargain, and the 
workman of course gets the worst of it. In short, he forfeits 
the whole fruits of his labour, but he does it voluntarily, 
readily, and for choice, because he has neither the courage nor 
the industry to use his own judgment and take his own risks. 
To call this plunder on the part of the employer is untrue and 
unjust. 

That the poor are in this helpless position is due, he says, 
to the fact that society is at present organised solely in the 
interests of the rich, evidently regarding the social organism as 
an artificial creation. Nature is not surely accused of working 
*'in the interests of the rich." But not only does nature, 



330 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS 

or the human artificer who constructed the social 
with this class partiality, place the poor in an unenviable posi- 
tion ; it is also necessary to arrange that they shall not find it 
out until the advent of Mr. Joynes. The poor cannot, he says, 
organise society on a system which will prevent their being 
robbed of their own productions, because the, existing organisa- 
tion itself keeps them ignorant of its own causes, and consequently 
powerless to resist its effects. 

ISTow for the cure. This is to be based on the principle 
of justice — the principle which has ever been appealed to by 
each wrong-headed reformer from the days of Adam. But in 
order to give justice a chance, and something to go upon, 
another question must needs be begged ; and that is that the 
fruits of industry are the fruits of labour. If capital contri- 
butes to the increase of wealth, clearly the capitalist has a 
right to at least his proportionate share of the increase. We 
must therefore pretend that capital does not contribute. Yet 
the contention is absurdly false. 

I cannot see why socialists are necessarily opposed to all 
political parties as our author alleges. It is true that existing 
parties are both opposed to them. That is to say. Conservatives 
deny the truth of the political doctrine on which socialism is 
based, while neo-radicals have neither the consistency nor the 
courage to carry their principles into practice. They are 
afraid of being extreme ! But there is no necessary antagonism 
between neo-radicals and socialists. Nor are we concerned to ask 
why the name socialist has been bestowed on these extreme 
advocates of compulsory co-operation. The reason adduced by 
Mr. Joynes is certainly not the true one ; firstly, because there 
are many persons quite as anxious as he is to " displace the 
present system of competition for the bare means of subsistence, 
and to establish in its stead the principle of associated work," 
who do not call themselves socialists, and whom nobody calls 
socialists ; secondly, because the description of the socialistic 
aim is utterly inadequate. The individualist believes that the 
enlightened and progressive self-interest of individuals will 
eventually, though gradually, bring about a higher order of 
society — higher, probably, than any human being now living 
could even conceive, much less plan. The socialist, on the 



XI AN ANALYSIS OF SOCIALISM 331 

contrary, has no faith in this individualist evolution, or is too 
impatient to wait for it, and he proposes to effect a sort of 
artificial evolution on lines laid down by a majority in council 
assembled. The acts of the citizens are to be dictated by 
society. Hence the doctrine is called socialism. 

The second chapter of the Catechism is entitled " The 
Capitalist System." It abounds in fallacies, and perpetuates 
the ridiculous notion of " use value," which is carefully 
distinguished from "exchange value." The whole tissue of 
cobwebs is extracted bodily from the works of the orthodox 
political economists. It is the padding which forms part of 
their stock-in-trade. 

It will be seen that the sole source of wealth is said to be 
labour. !N"ow some economists define wealth as everything 
which is useful to man and which has exchange value. But 
Mr. Joynes defines it very distinctly as " everything that 
supplies the wants of man and ministers in any way to his 
comfort and enjoyment," whether it has an exchange value or 
not. Hence air and water are wealth. When he goes on to 
say that all wealth is derived from labour, he says that which 
is absurdly untrue. Let him either adopt the old definition 
of wealth — which is wrong — or else give up the old Eicardian 
theory of the origin of wealth. His present position is 
untenable and ridiculous. I prefer to define wealth as all that 
which is useful to man; we can dispense with Mr. Joynes's 
rigmarole. Wealth then falls into two large classes. 1. Those 
useful things to which man has been adapted, as all animals 
are adapted to their environment by the elimination of the 
unfit and the survival of the fit. 2. Those useful things which 
man has adapted to his own use. In the former class would 
come air and water ; in the second class would fall all kinds 
of tools and manufactured commodities. Man has become 
adapted in the wild state to the fruits and other foods around 
him ; and the berries and nuts he gathers from the trees, 
though wealth, are no more the result of his labour than the 
sun, by whose rays he is warmed and comforted. Even Mr. 
Joynes would hardly go so far as to base any theory of 
distribution among tribes of monkeys on the ground that the 
apples and cocoa-nuts around are the product of their labour. 



332 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

Farther on we shall see the object of this baseless contention 
that wealth is derived from labour ; for yet another false 
premise must be improvised before the doctrine is of any use 
as the basis of socialism. 

As for the term " use value," it is almost meaningless, and 
absolutely without either use or value as an economic expres- 
sion ! It is impossible to measure the amount of pleasure 
which anything is capable of affording. Such amount varies 
with the individual enjoying it. Moreover the different kinds 
of pleasure enjoyed by a single individual are, inter se, incom- 
mensurable. How many times does the pleasure of eating 
cheese-cakes go into the pleasure of gazing on a lovely land- 
scape, or listening to a grand symphony ? Let us clear our 
heads of all these cobwebs. The elements of plutology are not 
really very difficult or mysterious. Most of the dust has been 
kicked up by the economists themselves. Let us see. Wealth 
is everything which affords pleasure to man. Part of it is 
found ready to hand, contributed, so to speak, by nature ; and 
part of it is due (in part) to the labour of man. But even 
this latter is not, as a rule, wholly the product of labour. If 
the raw material had value before it was operated upon, that 
part of the manufactured article's value is due not to labour 
but to nature. The value of a thing is simply the amount 
(according to any standard of measurement) of other things for 
which it can be exchanged. And this of course varies in 
different localities. In London a spectroscope is worth a good 
deal more than a handful of glass beads ; on the Gold Coast, 
a good deal less. The expression " use value " should be 
abolished altogether. Then value stands for exchange value, 
and that alone. The following statement, therefore, amounts 
to nothing more than that a loaf is more useful to a 
hungry man than to one who is satiated. This is quite true, 
but not very original or profound. " Its use value to a 
starving man is infinitely great, as it is a question of life and 
death with him to obtain it ; it is nothing at all to a turtle-fed 
alderman, sick already with excessive eating ; but its exchange 
value remains the same in all cases." 

We have next to learn what capital is ; and the definition 
given of it is just as accurate as the definition of wealth. It 



XI AN ANALYSIS OF SOCIALISM 333 

is the result, we are told, of past labour devoted to present 
productions. Of course capital is as much the result of past 
labour as wealth in general is the result of past labour, and 
no more so. Capital is, in truth, all that wealth whose value 
is due to the demand for it as an element of production, and 
not as an immediately enjoyable commodity. I^obody enjoys 
a file, or a saw, or a bale of flax ; but most of us enjoy a ripe 
peach or a basin of turtle soup. ]N"ow coals we may enjoy 
directly by making a good fire on a winter night ; and they 
also serve as elements of production. They are capital or not 
capital according as their value is determined by the demand 
for them in use in furnaces and factories or for keeping us 
warm. Thus jet burns quite as well as coal, and would be as 
useful in furnaces. So do diamonds. But they are not capital 
because their value is due to the demand for them as directly 
enjoyable or useful commodities. 

However, Mr. Joynes's definition is quite good enough for 
the purpose he has in view, as will be seen. Having fashioned 
his tools, he sets to work with them. He points out that the 
landlord secures his profit by extorting from the labourer a 
share of all that he produces under threat of excluding him 
from the land ; and that the capitalist extorts from those 
labourers who are excluded from the land a share of all that 
they produce, under threat of withholding from them the 
implements of production, and thus refusing to let them work 
at all. He then agrees, we are told, to return to them as 
wages about a quarter of what they have produced by their 
work, keeping the remaining three-quarters for himself and his 
class. And this is the capitalist system. 

One would have supposed that even the most orthodox 
political economist would have been able to detect the circular 
form of this fallacy. How do the landlord and capitalist 
secure their rent and profit ? By extorting from the labourers, 
who are excluded from the land and from the ownership of 
capital, the greater share of what they produce, and leaving 
them only sufficient to keep them alive. That is the explana- 
tion with which we are supposed to put up. But why do the 
silly labourers permit this extortion, seeing that they far out- 
number the landlords and capitalists ? Oh, the landlords and 



334 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

capitalists, with their ill-gotten gains, hire soldiers and police- 
men to keep the labourers in subjection. But why do not the 
labourers extort from the capitalist the whole profits of his 
capital, and with the proceeds hire an army to hold him in 
subjection ? Well, you see, they have to get the profits first ; 
the capitalist has got the start of them. And how, we further 
ask, did he get the start ? Why did not they get the start, 
seeing what an advantage they had in numbers ? Well, the 
fact is, he made a bargain with them, and they got the worst 
of the bargain. Quite so ; the whole transaction is a volun- 
tary one. There is no extortion, no coercion. The capitalist 
system merely denotes the arrangement under which each 
contributor to an adventure takes a share of the gross returns 
proportionate to the capital contributed by him. 

And now from a great falsehood we come to a great truth, 
namely, that the amount returned to the labourer is the amount 
necessary to keep him and his family alive. Yes ; such is the 
result of the iron law of wages — the terrible law which keeps 
the bulk of the population down close to the starvation limit. 
Mr. Joynes does not seem quite to understand it, or the proof 
of its truth, for he considers it necessary to bolster it up in a 
palpably superfluous way. He calls in the doctors as 
witnesses. I^ow no proof of this kind is required. The pro- 
position can be demonstrated deductively, and is as certain as 
any proposition in Euclid. Given the wage system and the 
postulate that population presses on means of subsistence, and 
then the iron law of wages follows as obviously as day follows 
night. 

It is true the " orthodox " have woven a fabric of moon- 
beams wherewith to clothe the nakedness of this spectre, and 
they have called it "the standard of comfort." But the 
hideous form gleams through the unsubstantial vesture, and 
the victims of wagedom are devoured as before. The fiction 
is comforting ; and as for the fact — well, that does not affect 
the " orthodox political economists." But the present system 
must be made to appear decent. 

Setting aside the animus shown by the use of the words 
" extortion " and " threat," there is little or no fault to find 
with Mr. Joynes's statement of the case. It is true that under 



XI AN ANALYSIS OF SOCIALISM 335 

the wage system now in vogue, the " iron law of wages " does 
operate to keep down the reward of labour to the cost of 
"keeping body and soul together," and we need not quarrel 
with the manner in which the truth is brought to our notice. 
Neither need individuals quarrel with the remedy proposed, 
namely, that the labouring classes should become their own 
employers. By all means let the workers become their own 
employers. By the laws of civilised communities all persons 
are the owners of their own bodies ; but they are permitted to 
let themselves out for hire, though they cannot sell themselves 
out and out. This system of letting themselves out for hire 
by time is called the wage system, and it is doubtless the cause 
of most of the ills affecting the working classes. But the 
change would not abolish idleness. Idle people (and I do not 
admire them any more than Mr. Joynes) would continue to 
flourish in idleness on the fruits of capital, which is not the 
fruits of the labour of living persons, but (for the most part) 
the fruits of the labour of persons long since dead. This 
curious fallacy crops up again and again. 

Chapter II. concludes with the observation that the work 
done by a company would go on just as well if the shareholders 
disappeared. Possibly it would ; but how would the work of 
the Company have progressed if there had been no share- 
holders to begin with ? Take this case. A man, who might 
have been tilling the ground and growing potatoes, spends 
his time in making a plough. It takes him many weeks to 
make it. When it is finished, he lends it to his neighbour 
for a consideration which pays him better than if he had 
tilled his land. Both parties gain by the arrangement. 
Straightway the agriculturist says : " Very good, friend, 
but you are not wanted. The ploughing goes on well 
enough without you. Leave your plough with us, and go 
and improve yourself off the face of the earth." That is 
just what Mr. Joynes says to the shareholders. And this is 
socialism ! 

The third chapter deals with what socialists call surplus 
value. We shall see what is meant by this term. Meantime 
no objection is taken to capital as such. " The way in which it 
is used is attacked by socialists, not the thing itself, and it is 



336 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

only by means of a democratic state, acting in the interest of 
the producer, that it can be turned to the advantage of the 
labourer." 

Here we see the cloven hoof, bearing out my previous 
contention, namely, that it is not merely co-operation which 
socialism denotes, but compulsory co-operation — co-operation 
planned and enforced by the State or organised society. Here 
it is admitted. In the description of socialism in the first 
chapter this feature is entirely ignored. While admitting that 
under the system of wagedom, capital is not exactly used " in 
the interest of the labourers," we shall see whether State 
socialism is really the only scheme by which a cure can 
be effected ; whether individualism is not capable of evolv- 
ing an industrial system workable " in the interest of the 
labourers," and also in the interest of the capitalists, who, 
after all (and despite modern cant), are worth more, and a 
good deal more — man for man — than the much -belauded 
" proletariat." 

But to return to our text. How is State socialism to 
work ? " By taking into its own hands all the land and 
capital, or means of production, which are now used as 
monopolies for the benefit of the possessing class. As the 
State has already taken over the Post-Ofifice and the Telegraphs, 
so it might take over the Eailways, Shipping, Mines, Factories, 
and all other industries." 

The expression, "in whose interest," which frequently 
occurs throughout this Catechism, is either meaningless or 
misleading. If it means that there is any conscious pur- 
pose — any design on the part of those who uphold the 
present industrial system — it is manifestly untrue. If it 
merely means that the employers get the best of the wage 
bargain, it will not be denied. The employers do receive a 
profit on their investments, and the wage receivers do not. 
But to say that production is now carried on in anybody's 
interest is a most unjust insinuation, more especially when Mr. 
Joynes himself admits that employers are not individually 
responsible for the system ; for he will hardly pretend that 
employers have consciously entered into a sort of class compact 
to keep the proletariat in subjection. That may be the ej 



XI AN ANAL YSIS OF SOCIALISM 337 

of certain social causes, but it certainly is not the purpose of 
willed acts. 

We are then told that the labourers produce the machinery, 
which is no more true than the statement that the female alone 
produces the offspring. It is apparently true, and that is all. 
Sometimes capital contributes less than the labourers ; some- 
times a great deal more. Again, to say that the employers 
" take it away " from them is just as fair as to say that Mr. 
Joynes goes and takes what he wants from the grocer's shop 
Of course he does — and pays for it. We are intended to 
gather that the employer steals the labourer's machinery, 
whereas the " taking away " is pursuant to the wage contract. 
When Mr. Joynes says that the cure is for the State to " take 
into its own hands " the land and the capital which is now 
private property, he might be a little more explicit and say 
whether he means huy it or steal it ; because in the one case 
the community would be ruined, in the other case only the 
best members of the community — ^just at first. There is no 
need to quarrel with the contention that to buy these things 
— all the ships, mines, railways, factories, gas-works, canals, 
furnaces, etc. — would be just as good a stroke of business, and 
just as sound a policy, as the " taking over " of the post-ofiice 
and telegraphs. I can bethink myself of no more improving 
task for socialists than to be set to work to go through the 
accounts of the department from its commencement down to 
the present year. And alas ! when all is said and done, our 
teacher in the very next sentence admits that the workers 
would be no better off than before. Look at the poor post- 
man. 

Cannot the workers combine together by co-operation, it is 
asked, to defeat this principle of competition ? No ; not unless 
the whole body of workers are included in one society, and 
that is simply socialism, says our teacher. 

Here we have the grand sociahst mistake of confounding 
voluntary co-operation with compulsory. If the whole body 
of workers were included in one society of their own free will 
and accord, that would no more be socialism than the present 
system. It is really time the socialists dropped this absurd 
contention. Trade unionism is no more socialistic than a 

z 



338 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

joint-stock company or a cricket club. But what is the con- 
clusive reason adduced for discarding voluntary co-operation ? 
Simply that it cannot get rid of competition. So much the 
better. It must be proved that competition is really the 
harmful principle in the existing system. That has never 
been done. It is some comfort to find the wage contract 
described as a " bargain." It is usually described by our 
teacher and his fellow-socialists as an arrangement forced on 
the labourer. 

We are next introduced to "surplus value," which is 
defined as the difference between a bare subsistence and the 
fruits of labour. " Necessary labour is that which would feed 
and clothe and keep in comfort the nation if all took their part 
in performing it." It is already evident that Mr. Joynes, like 
all socialists, is a member of the " Daniel Lambert " school of 
politics. To exist is necessary ; to be fat is necessary : but to 
be educated, cultured, something above the mere brute — that is 
not necessary, it is a luxury. 

What do we mean by necessary labour ? I mean nothing 
by it. I never use the expression. The labour which results 
in a noble work of art is in my opinion quite as necessary as 
the labour which results in a pair of corduroy trousers. More- 
over, the very existence of most persons is by no means 
necessary in the sense of " indispensable." The world could get 
on very well without them. Once upon a time a thief put 
forward the plea of necessity — " Mais, il faut vivre ! " But the 
judge quietly and pertinently replied, ''Je ne vois pas la 
n^cessiU." There is no necessity to keep alive a huge, ugly, and 
stupid population; and the labour spent in "feeding and 
clothing " the nation might well be more suitably, and even 
productively, spent in creating things which minister to the 
higher tastes. However, all these reflections fall under the 
still unanswered question. Is life worth living ? 

No individual employer, we are told, is responsible for the 
exploitation of the labourers ; the blame applies to the whole 
class. Individual employers may be ruined, but the employing 
class continue to appropriate the surplus value. And the 
reason of this is because competition is as keen amongst the 
capitalists as among the labourers. It determines the division of 



XI AN ANALYSIS OF SOCIALISM 339 

the spoil ; different sets of people struggling to get a share in 
the surplus value. It does not affect the labourers at all. It 
is assumed that the plunder is to be shared among the " upper 
classes," and the only question is in what proportion this shall 
be done. All this may be quite true without justifying the 
language used when we are told that that which the employers 
take from the employed is spoil and plunder. It is nothing of 
the sort. It is merely the fruits of a bargain which, from the 
labourers' point of view, is a very foolish and bad bargain. 
We may admit that, without accusing those who get the best of 
the bargain of being plunderers. 

But in what follows it is not the language only which is 
censurable, it is the gross fallacy on which the whole socialist 
argument rests. " This plunder is labelled by many names, 
such as rent, brokerage, fees, profits, wages of superintendence, 
reward of abstinence, insurance against risk, but above all, 
interest on capital. They are all deducted from the labourers' 
earnings. There is no other fund from which they could 
possibly come, and they are simply taken for nothing, just as 
a thief accumulates his stolen goods." Here is the socialist 
fallacy in its nakedness. "There is no other fund from which 
they could possibly come ! " i.e. wages of superintendence, fees 
for medical attendance, and legal advice and such like ; as if 
all these payments were not for hard work and skilled work 
done. To say that a man who adds more to production by 
working with his head than perhaps one hundred men do by 
working with their hands is paid necessarily out of the fruits of 
their labour is simply transparent nonsense. 

There is quite another explanation of the payment for in- 
terest and rent, and " abstinence " and insurance against risk. 
Capital, as I have said, contributes to new value, sometimes 
more, and sometimes less, than the labourers engaged on the 
work. It may be the saved result of work done a year ago, or 
fifty years ago. Anyhow, it has never been consumed by those 
who had a right to consume it. As soon as it is employed in 
further production it has to be destroyed. When the product 
emerges it may be worth less than the elements invested, or it 
may be worth more. As a rule, civilised man being a prudent 
animal, it is wortli a little more, on the average about 3 per cent 



340 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

more. This is the average profit on capital, and it is properly 
called economic interest, because the element of risk may be 
eliminated by spreading it over a wide area of investments. 
Those who insure the interest reap the larger profits if any, 
and incur the loss if any. You cannot eat your corn and sow 
it ; and if you sow it, you are not satisfied to receive a like 
amount at the end of the year. Is it not ridiculous to say 
that the man who sows your corn in your field for you is the 
sole producer of the new value next harvest ? All capital 
fructifies — grows like a tree. If a sapling, eight -feet four in 
height, grows three inches in a year, it fairly represents the 
annual growth of capital. 

Here is an interesting definition of interest. " Interest is 
a fine paid by the private organiser of labour out of the 
surplus value which his labourers supply, to the idle person 
from whom he borrows his capital." We now see what a 
particularly ridiculous conclusion we are driven to, if we 
accept this theory of surplus value. Interest a fine ! Of 
course the expression " surplus value " has no definite meaning 
whatever. It vaguely conveys to the socialist's mind the 
difference between the value of the work which has to be done 
and the value of the work which he would not mind doing 
without the stimulus of hunger; that is to say, the average 
amount of work which would be required if everybody was 
satisfied to be warm and fat, and to have plenty of sleep. It 
is curious to observe that in such a sodden state of society 
prevision would be weaker, a future pleasure would compare 
less favourably with an equal present pleasure, and consequently 
interest would be higher. ISTo one will exchange a present 
pleasure for a future pleasure without an extra inducement. 
Mr. Joynes himself, with a peach in his hand on a hot summer 
day, would not exchange it for the promise of an equally 
luscious peach on the next hot day. Why should he ? But 
if the would-be purchaser agreed to give him two peaches on 
the next hot day, he might think it worth his while to close 
the bargain. That would be 100 per cent interest; and 
yet Mr. Joynes would hardly consider he was imposing a fine 
on the other party. A man must be a metaphysician, a 
lunatic, or a political economist to understand the stuff that 



XI AN ANALYSIS OF SOCIALISM 341 

has been written by the " orthodox " about interest. Thus, 
when we speak of interest, we must steer between Scylla and 
Charybdis — between the socialist contention that it is a device 
of the devil for enriching the rich at the expense of the poor, 
and the orthodox theory that it is a divine reward for the 
exercise of some subtle and saintly virtue called abstinence or 
thrift. The plain truth is (as every banker assumes in 
practice) that interest is the current estimate of average 
national profits. If, therefore, interest is a fine, profits are a 
fine. One cannot draw a line between two men, one of whom 
draws 2|- per cent from Government securities, and the other 
of whom draws Z\ per cent from Great Western preference 
stock. But, after allowing for these peculiarities of thought 
and of language, Mr. Joynes makes one very true and 
important admission. The share contributed to industry by 
the capitalist, as compared with the share contributed by the 
wage slave, tends to become larger and larger. And the 
tendency must continue so long as the workers tolerate the 
present wage system. True ; but sociahsm is not the cure or 
the substitute for it. 

Mr. Joynes makes it clear that he shares the neo-radical 
delusion that factory laws have the effect of raising wages. 
This is untrue. I shall not take refuge behind the argument 
that, owing to the ease with which laws are evaded, the 
expected effect in the abstract fails in the concrete. I go 
farther. I say that, even granting inviolable factory laws, 
wages would not be permanently affected. Let it be 
supposed that an Eight Hours' Bill is passed, prohibiting all — 
men, women, and children — from working more than eight 
hours in any one day. What is the effect? Not that of 
making an eight -hour day's wage equal to a ten -hour day's 
wage ! No ; the first effect is that the worker will get only 
four-fifths of his former wage. But this is hdow suhsistence 
wage. True; but subsistence wage includes the item for a 
sinking fund to enable the worker to rear up children to take 
his place. This is the first item to be knocked off The 
workers of the required kind are not reproduced ; the price of 
that kind of labour rises a little to meet the demand ; then 
the price of the goods at which they work is raised. The 



342 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

demand shrinks : down goes the trade, and a lower level is 
reached — we have a smaller population, dearer necessaries and 
luxuries, and (it is true) shorter hours. Mr. Hyndman has 
over and over again pointed out that an Artisans' Dwellings 
Act would have no other effect than to put money into the 
pockets of employers. If the State paid the whole of the 
labourer's rent the employer would be able to reduce his wages 
by precisely that amount. Mr. Champion lately pointed out 
the same thing. If Mr. Joynes really understands and accepts 
the " iron law," he should admit that he has made a mistake 
in speaking of degrees of exploitation, of "exploiting to the 
uttermost." Wagedom is what socialists call " exploitation to 
the uttermost." There is no deeper depth to sound. 

The fourth chapter in this curious Catechism is charac- 
teristically entitled "Methods of Extortion." Capital without 
labour is helpless, we are told. Now, nobody ever said that 
capital without labour is, as a rule, productive. Nor will 
Mr. Joynes pretend that labour without capital is productive. 
As a rule, both labour and capital are helpless without the 
other. It is true that in certain cases capital is productive 
alone, as, for instance, when an owned tree of value produces 
fruit without any attention. So, also, labour is occasionally 
productive without the aid of capital, as when a sculptor 
creates a work of value out of some valueless stone or clay. 
But, as a rule, Mr. Joynes is right in saying that without 
labour capital is helpless. He should have added that labour 
without capital is helpless. He proposes as a remedy that the 
State should compete with the capitalist by providing employ- 
ment for the labourers, and paying them the full value of their 
productions. Now, what in reason's name is meant by the 
State ? And how is it going to acquire the capital necessary 
to enable it to employ the labourers ? It is clear from the 
context that by "the full value of their production" Mr. 
Joynes means " the full value of the total product of industry " ; 
that is to say, the fruits of labour phis the fruits of capital. 
If so, it is obvious that the capital held by the State would 
rapidly dwindle away, unless made good from some other 
source. The question is. What source ? And the only possible 
answer is, Taxation. 



XI AN ANAL YSIS OF SOCIALISM 343 

Large accumulations of wealth by individuals is an evil, 
says Mr. Joynes, but capital in private hands is worse. No 
proof, and not the smallest evidence, is given in support of this 
sweeping allegation. ISTo proposition has been more keenly 
disputed than this. I for one certainly cannot accept Mr. 
Joynes's i'pse dixit on the subject. If large accumulations 
of wealth in private hands is an evil, it must be for some 
reason. What reason ? I assert that so far from being an 
evil, it is an unmixed good. No one is forced to accept my 
dogmatic assertion, but there it is. Large accumulations of 
the particular kind of wealth denoted by the term " capital " is 
also a good in itself. At least we have been shown nothing to 
the contrary ; and, moreover, we see that it is an increasing 
tendency, and that such tendency is accompanied by a diminish- 
ing cost of production. At the same time nobody denies that 
good things may be abused. Wealth may be expended in 
drink and debauchery. And this is true of capital. At the 
present time capital is expended in hiring wage slaves. If it 
were reserved for investing in industrial undertakings in which 
only free men were engaged, the larger the accumulations of 
capital in individual hands the better. If wagedom were 
suppressed anyhow — by capitalisation or by socialism — then 
large accumulations of wealth would, we are told, not matter so 
much. Why not ? Because the capitahst system presupposes 
the existence of two factors, and is unworkable and impossible 
without them. First, private property in accumulated wealth ; 
and secondly, the presence of propertyless labourers in the 
market, who are forced to sell their services at cost price, that 
is to say, at wages that will give them a bare subsistence and 
enable them to work on the morrow, this being the cost of the 
daily reproduction of the force or power to labour which 
constitutes their sole property. There is a slight but important 
omission here. The whole of the factors are not enumerated. 
There is the item which goes to enable the different kinds of 
workers to rear up children to take their place when they are 
used up. When this is neglected, and the item is not paid to 
the wage slave, the result is that the number of hands in the 
trade where the omission has taken place is reduced, and wages 
rise till the normal proportion of hands is again reached. 



344 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

Thus the employer cannot permanently shirk the payment of 
this item. As a rule, he does not try. 

Still there is an element of truth in all this. The present 
wage system is one under which the labourer forfeits (there is 
no need to say that he is robbed) the whole of the profits of 
his labour. That is true ; but he does it voluntarily. The 
socialists propose an alternative system in which the capitalist 
is to forfeit the whole of the profits on his capital. This is 
equally unreasonable, and inasmuch as it is proposed to deprive 
him by force against his will, it is robbery. Why cannot 
capitalist and worker pull together, and agree to take each 
the profits on his own contribution ? The capitalisation of 
labour would solve the labour question without injury to any 
one. 

Perhaps the best answer to this question is that given by 
Mr. Joynes himself What has hitherto prevented the workers 
from combining for the overthrow of the capitalist system is 
ignorance, he says — ignorance due to the system itself, which 
compels them to spend all their lives upon monotonous toil, 
and leaves them no time for education. 

Throughout this Catechism a free use is made of technical 
terms, both economical and legal. But the use of the term 
" fraud " is the most unwarrantable. What is fraud ? If a 
drowning man is induced to promise half his fortune before 
another man on the bank will throw him a rope, is the bargain 
a fraudulent one ? Not a bit of it. It is a shameful bargain, 
but there is no fraud in it. If a man sells a rare book for a 
mere trifle to one who knows its true value, the sale is not 
fraudulent. The buyer may get a book worth £200 for half-a- 
crown by what we should call a shabby act, but there is no 
fraud. Then, where is the fraud in hiring a wage slave ? It 
is simply nonsense to use such language. " Under the slave- 
owning system there was no fraud involved, but only force," 
says our author. " The similarity between the slave-owning 
and the capitalist system is complete, with the single exception 
that force was used in place of fraud;" 

Freedom of contract is next described as a farce. Now 
it is not altogether a farce. Tirst of all the labourer is free to 
choose his master. But, beyond that, he is perfectly free to 



XI AN ANAL YSIS OF SOCIALISM 345 

capitalise himself if so disposed, and, by union, force the proper 
system on employers, who would benefit as much as the 
workers. His " freedom " is limited in this respect only by his 
own ignorance and laziness — internally, not externally. 

Having described freedom of contract as a farce, the 
question arises in what sense is it free ? The answer given is, 
that the labourer is free to take what is offered or nothing. 
Or, let me add, the full fruits of his labour, as ascertained after 
the completion of the process. This he is fool enough, or 
coward enough, to refrain from demanding, and to reject when 
offered. As a class, for this reason, wage slaves deserve no 
pity. Folly may be a pitiable quality, but it does not always 
arouse the emotion of pity. Of course, failing this course, the 
workers must, as Mr. Joynes says, accept the market value of 
their services, or nothing. 

" Nor has lie anything to fall back upon, except that in England 
Humanity has revolted against the reign of the capitalist, and provided 
the workhouse as a last resource for the labourer, taxing the capitalist for 
its support. But the capitalist has turned this piece of socialism to his 
own ends by rendering the workhouse so unpleasant to the poor that 
starvation is often thought preferable, and by insisting that no useful 
work done in the workhouse shall be brought into his market, where its 
presence would disturb his calculations and impair his profits. He only 
allows it to exist at all because he knows that its existence may stave off 
for a time the Revolution which he dreads." 

Surely there is a contradiction here. Mr. Joynes has 
carefully divided the population into capitalists and labourers, 
rich and poor, idlers and workers. He now tells us that the 
capitalist allows the workhouse to exist, " hecause he knows that 
its existence may stave off for a time the revolution." He 
also tells us that Humanity has provided the workhouse. 
Who are included in the ranks of humanity ? Have the 
workers provided the workhouse for themselves ? The fact is 
Mr. Joynes has not yet made up his mind whether the work- 
house is a socialistic tribute to pity, or a cunning capitalistic 
safety-valve against revolution, or, as he prefers to call it, " the 
Eevolution " with a big R Educated persons can talk about 
revolutions in manners, customs, habits, morals, etc., without 
feeling to tingle at their own daring. Just as Salvationists 



346 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

trade on the mob's well-known weakness for a good romping 
chorus, so the socialists trade on the taste of the young roughs 
for Jack Sheppard, blood and terror. It makes budding 
" Britons strut with courage." The orator w^ho hints with 
flashing eye at deeds without a name, at hidden knives and 
dynamite, who menacingly reminds the Duke of Broadacres 
and landlords in general of the fate of Foulon ; such an one 
is already a hero in his own conceit, and half a hero to 
the buffle-heads who listen to him as children listen to ghost 
stories. 

However, Mr. Joynes is not quite so far gone as that. By 
revolution he means what ordinary people mean — a complete 
change, a change which we all look forward to, one which will 
abolish all unjust privileges and differences, and will render 
the workers their own employers. That is what co-operationists 
and capitalisationists all look forward to, but they are content 
to spell the word with a little modest " r," and to risk the 
support of the Tichbornites, the Skeleton Army, and other 
" thinkers of that School." But let Mr. Joynes explain himself. 
By revolution he means " the complete change in the conditions 
of society which will abolish all unjust privileges, distinctions of 
rank, or difference between wage payers and wage earners, and 
will render the workers their own employers." We are next 
treated to a diatribe against landlordism, " of which force is the 
chief element, since it labels the surplus value 'rents,' and 
uses all the resources of civilisation in the shape of police and 
soldiery to enforce their payment by the people ; but the 
element of fraud is present, since the labourer is told that he 
is free to give up his holding if he does not wish to pay rent." 
If our author is addressing himself to the silly rabble above 
mentioned, his workmanship is, on the whole, too good. It is 
thrown away upon them. But if he is writing for educated 
persons, I venture to say that this last passage is an insult to 
their common sense. To call the bargain between landlord and 
tenant a fraudulent one, hecaiise the tenant is told that he need 
not enter into it unless he likes, is trifling with the intelligence 
of the reader. As for the other and " chief element," it is 
absurdly untrue that force is used in this or any civilised country 
for the extortion of rents. No one is compelled to pay rent 



XI AN ANALYSIS OF SOCIALISM 347 

any more than he is compelled to buy a fiddle or to hire a 
cab. 

There is practically no difference between the mode of 
enforcing rent and the mode of enforcing payment for the hire 
of other goods. If Mr. Joynes hires a horse or a threshing 
machine for a week he will be forced to pay, if he can ; and 
whether he can pay or not, he will be forced to deliver up 
possession of the horse or machine, however much he may 
sincerely believe that the act of hiring has somehow invested 
him with some kind of proprietary right. The element of 
force enters as much into one class of cases as it does into the 
other. There is no appeal to police and soldiery in the one 
case more than in the other. When one man takes or re- 
tains what belongs to another, he must be made to surrender 
it — by force if necessary. Where the fraud comes in it is 
hard to see. 

But there is another egregious fallacy herein contained. 
The man who pays rent and then takes the whole profits of his 
industry is not a wage slave at all, but a free man, more 
especially when his bargain with the landowner is of the nature 
of a lease, calculated on the average productiveness of like 
land. Whether he pays his rent in the shape of money or of 
services makes no difference whatever as to the honesty of the 
bargain. 

I have so little criticism of a substantial kind to pass upon 
the gist of Mr. Joynes's fifth chapter, entitled " Machines and 
their Uses," that I am almost tempted to reprint it without 
comment as a fair statement of the capitalisationist view of the 
subject. But the tone of the answers is so unsatisfactory that 
I could not adopt that course without compromising myself, 
and moreover, the first and last portions spoil the effect of 
the whole. " Labour-saving machinery is used, as its name 
indicates, to reduce the cost of production, and by cost of pro- 
duction we mean the amount of human labour necessary to 
produce useful things." I mean nothing of the sort. It is true 
that the employment of machinery is one way of reducing cost 
of production, but it is only one way. Neither does the term 
" labour saving " cover all the methods of reducing the cost of 
production. Nor is it correct to describe machinery as reducing 



348 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

cost of production solely through the reduction in the amount of 
human labour required to produce useful things. To begin with, 
locomotive engines save horse labour, which is not human. 
Furthermore, machinery effects a great saving not only in 
labour, but also in capital. For example, the wool-combing 
machine saved the whole of the noil which used to pass away 
with the waste. To such an extent was this the case, that 
whereas hand - combers were charging fourpence a pound, 
machine -combers were able to comh for nothing at a profit 
until competition compelled the whole trade to adopt the 
machine. So brick-making machines and certain mineral oil 
processes enable us to utilise materials which were formerly so 
much refuse. 

I have already dwelt upon the persistent socialist fallacy 
— shared, it is true, by the orthodox school of political economy 
— that the cost of production is the amount of human labour 
required to produce. First of all, it is not even literally true, 
because nature supplies some valuables without labour. But 
the main flaw in the statement is that it overlooks the successive 
processes in production, and in practice attributes the value of 
the product to the labour consumed in the latest process, or, at 
all events, in the last few processes. Having premised this, I 
am in complete accord with the rest of this chapter, which states 
very fairly and very clearly the precise position of wage 
receivers with respect to machinery. Labour has not benefited 
as it should have done through the introduction of machinery. 
" It is questionable," says John Stuart Mill, " if all the improve- 
ments in machinery have lightened the day's toil of a single 
man." Unfortunately this is by no means the worst of it. In 
addition to these occasional and transitory evils, there is a great 
and growing evil resulting from the increasing introduction of 
machinery. The resulting division of labour so specialises the 
work of the several classes of workers that there is less and 
less need for the exercise of intelligence. Their work tends 
to become more monotonous, easier, and consequently sustain- 
able for longer hours than formerly. They are becoming less 
like men and more like automatons day by day. People do 
not make boots or shirts now ; they make tops or button- 
holes. 



I 



XI AN ANAL YSIS OF SOCIALISM 349 

" Their employer, it is true, saves their labour in the sense of getting 
the same work done by the machine without having to pay their wages. 
But this is not a permanent advantage to him individually. As long as 
he has a monopoly of the machine, it is a great advantage to him, but 
other capitalists soon introduce it also, and compel him to share the spoil 
with them. The owners of the machines try to undersell each other, 
with a view to keeping the production in their own hands ; and com- 
petition beats down prices until the normal level of capitalist profits is 
reached, below which they all decline to go." 

All this is very true, and altogether at variance with the 
teachings of the orthodox school. ISTor need we quarrel with 
the succeeding portion, except as to the absurd and ideal 
division of society into two classes, idlers and workers. This 
is, of course, a piece of socialist stock-in-trade; but if for 
workers and idlers we read wage receivers and wage payers, 
Mr. Joynes's contentions are not very wide of the mark. He 
very properly exposes the orthodox fallacy which vitiates every 
argument of the economists, and that is the assumption that 
the labourers have no right to complain so long as the 
employers are content with taking only the normal rate of 
profits as their share of the surplus value. It is well that this 
fallacy should be pointed out and insisted upon. I have often 
been met, when advocating capitalisation, with the argument — 
N'o room for improvement. The " orthodox " shakes his head. 
"You admit," says he, "that profits cannot fall below their 
normal level. Where then, under any system, is an improve- 
ment in labour remuneration to come from ? Clearly, it must 
come out of the consumer's pocket, or not at all." 

Again, he is right in pointing out that cheapness of 
production is only an apparent, not a real benefit to the 
workers. "It would be real if all who consumed were also 
workers. As it is, the working class get all the disadvantage 
of the low wages, and of the adulteration, which has been 
described as a form of competition." 

All this again is true. At the same time the manual 
workers do not suffer so much from adulteration as might at 
first sight appear. Few articles consumed by the wage receivers 
are adulterated with substances injurious to health ; and 
cheap substitutes for expensive articles do not, in the end, 
bring extra profits to the manufacturer. Competition brings 



350 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

down the profits on the sham to the normal level. The 
calico-maker who puts 40 per cent of China clay into his goods 
gets in the long run 40 per cent less for them. Consumers 
who like these cheap goods, irrespective of their quality, get 
articles more, than 40 per cent worse. The consumer is the 
chief offender and the chief sufferer ; serve him right. But 
the workman who buys (as a rule) the best quality of goods 
he can, cannot long be cheated out of his money's worth. 
Competition does it. 

" What makes the reduction of cost appear advantageous to the wage 
earners is the fact that their wages are paid in money. The money price 
of all articles has risen enormously during the last three centuries owing 
to the increased abundance of gold. The money wages have risen also, 
but not in anything like the same proportion. Again, the cheapening of 
bread and other necessaries is shown to have been an empty boon to the 
workers, because it has been proved again and again on the highest 
authority that the labourers, as a body, at present obtain so bare a sub- 
sistence that it does not suffice to keep them in health ; therefore they 
could not at any time have lived on half the amount. Similarly if bread 
became twice as dear, wages would necessarily rise. A Wiltshire farm- 
labourer could not maintain his family on half their present food ; and 
though capital cares nothing about individuals, it takes good care that the 
labourers shall not starve in a body." 

Here, again, the first effect of a general fall in wages is lost 
sight of The population of the workers whose wage is below 
the normal subsistence level ceases to increase. It is not a 
case of wholesale death by starvation. The capitalist, so far 
from taking care that the thing shall not occur, watches it 
with indifference every day. He cannot help it. Indeed, it 
may be said that it is no business of his. It all goes on in 
accordance with " the laws of supply and demand " — laws 
which have a real existence, in spite of the fact that they have 
never yet been stated by political economists, who are content 
to refer to them as immutable but mysterious decrees, located 
somewhere, and sanctifying the existing state of mundane 
affairs, more especially the extravagances of the rich and the 
sufferings of the poor. 

But in spite of all the evils resulting from machinery Mr. 
Joynes would not advise the workers to destroy the machinery. 
To destroy what they have themselves produced merely because 



XI AN ANALYSIS OF SOCIALISM 351 

it is at present stolen from them, would be absurd. The right 
course to pursue, he says, is to organise their ranks ; demand 
restitution of their property ; keep it under their control ; and 
work it for their own benefit. 

Here again we meet with the altogether unjustifiable word 
" stolen." Mr. Joynes himself would never accuse an indi- 
vidual employer of stealing. The term has a moral connota- 
tion, and this should be borne in mind. I quite agree that 
that which, under a better system, would have passed into the 
pockets of workmen has, under the existing wage system, 
passed into the pockets of capitalists. It is to be regretted, 
because it tends to keep whole strata of society down at the 
level of cost of subsistence. There can be no reasonable doubt 
that if British wage receivers had been free workers — had 
broken down the wage system — at the beginning of the 
present century, the many, many millions of pounds' worth 
of produce due to machinery would now be their property. 
The future is likely to be quite as prolific in inventions, and 
it is not too late to mend. But to pretend that because 
labourers of one sort or another have been too indolent or 
too stupid to take care of their own investments, therefore 
they have been robbed by their employers, is the height of 
folly and untruth. 

In disputing some of Mr. Joynes's propositions it is 
necessary to be very cautious for fear of doing an injustice, 
because terms are used in a sense which is unusual with 
political economists, or, at least, which ought to be. Tor 
instance, " cost of production " is employed to mean the labour 
expended in the process. Ordinary people use the term as 
meaning the united values of the labour and capital consumed 
in the process. But now the question arises whether the 
prices of articles would be raised if the community were 
organised on socialist principles ? Mr. Joynes thinks not — 
" not necessarily, nor in most cases ; but in some this would 
certainly be the result." But surely, if the labourer received 
more for the same amount of work, either the price of the 
product would be higher, or else the difference would have to 
come out of somebody else's pocket. [N'ow I am far from 
denying that under a better industrial system the manual 



352 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

workers would receive a larger share of the proceeds of industry. 
I think they would. I also agree that in the present state of 
improved communications a large number of the middlemen are 
unnecessary, and consequently a useless element in cost of 
production. This is the case with many retail shopkeepers. 
If the reduction made in the cost of middlemen went into the 
pockets of artisans, etc., it is evident that total cost of pro- 
duction would remain the same, and prices would remain the 
same. 

Substituting proper language for such words in the 
Catechism as " theft " and " stolen " it is true that the poorest 
class of workers do actually give their labour away, or very 
nearly so. But this can be remedied without adopting 
socialism. Some of us cannot roast a sucking-pig nowadays 
without burning the house down ! And who, now, are these 
dreadful people — these middlemen who are to be so ruthlessly 
swept away ? We ought to sympathise with individuals who 
have been reared to perform services which are no longer 
required. If cheap, safe, and rapid transport have rendered a 
good many distributors superfluous, they will have to learn new 
trades, or do as best they can. Such was the case when rail- 
ways pushed on one side those who only knew the coaching 
business. When machinery supersedes hand -workers, the 
socialists proclaim unbounded pity for them. Then why 
anathematise the unfortunate superfluous retailers ? Simply 
because with them are confounded in the socialist imagination 
a host of others, with whom they have absolutely nothing in 
common. 

Who are the middlemen who intercept and share the 
surplus value produced by the labourer ? They are, says our 
guide, the unnecessary agents and distributors, the holders of 
stock, bonds, and shares of every description, and all those who 
are supported by the wealth producers either in idleness or in 
useless labour, of which latter class of persons flunkeys are a 
conspicuous example. 

Here we have the unfortunate distributors jumbled up 
with shareholders— that is, simple capitalists who may or may 
not be workers — and with flunkeys, who, poor fellows ! work 
hard enough in all conscience. To stand and sit about for 



XI AN ANALYSIS OF SOCIALISM 355 

hours with tight stockings, cold feet, and " powdered " (that is 
whitewashed) hair is a form of martyrdom which most work- 
men would fly from, even though the factory or the workhouse 
were the alternative. This passage alone testifies to a hopeless 
confusion in the mind of Mr. Joynes, which goes far to explain 
his strange attitude toward many classes of useful public 
citizens. Where does Mr. Joynes draw the line between the 
flunkey, the private gardener, the piano manufacturer, and the 
lacemaker ? 

" But the rich," it seems, " do not even support their own 
flunkeys, and maintain in comfort those who produce luxuries 
for them. These people are maintained entirely by the 
workers, though the maintenance is passed through the 
hands of the rich, who therefore imagine that they pro- 
duce it." 

This statement is absolutely false. Munkeys (under which 
carefully chosen term of opprobrium Mr. Joynes probably in- 
cludes all classes of domestic servants) are maintained entirely 
out of the fairly acquired property of those who employ them. 
And by this I mean, of course, not that thieves do not some- 
times acquire property unfairly, and even employ domestics 
with their ill-gotten gains, but that honest masters and mis- 
tresses pay their servants out of the fruits of capital without 
inflicting the smallest injury or loss on other classes of workers. 
If John and William by diligence and ability acquire more 
than enough to keep themselves in ordinary comfort, they are 
justified in resting from their labours and spending their super- 
fluous gains in luxuries. John buys horses and carriages and 
works of fine art ; William hires singers and dancers and 
" flunkeys " to wait upon him and amuse him. In what way 
does William rob or injure those who are obliged to go on 
earning their daily bread any more than John ? Surely even 
socialists must see that this is a distinction without a difference. 
This conclusion in nowise precludes us from giving a hearty 
assent to the contention that expenditure on luxuries is not 
good for trade or beneficial to the workers. 

It is clear that if rich people had better taste than they 
seem to have, less would be spent on " luxuries " which are 
not luxuries, on things which utterly fail to give the pleasure 

2 a 



354 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

which is expected from them. The money which is spent on 
Brummagem trinketry, on hideous female apparel, on florid 
gingerbread architecture, on meretricious painting, and on 
gorgeous equipages and retinues, will in time to come, when 
the taste of mankind is elevated, be devoted to the production 
of things from which more true, lasting, and proportionate 
pleasure can be derived by educated minds. Meantime, while 
human nature is what it unfortunately is, we must remember 
that everything which affords pleasure — even to the unrefined 
— is useful. Economically there is no other definition of 
" useful " but " that which gives pleasure directly or indirectly." 
Elies are useful to spiders, thistles to donkeys, glass beads to 
Hottentots, and sham jewellery to factory girls. A hundred- 
weight of each would be of very little use to Mr. Joynes, 
except to sell to those who appreciate them. Nobody pretends 
that money spent on " flunkeys " benefits anybody except those 
who enjoy, or think they must needs enjoy, the services of the 
" flunkeys" ; just as nobody is benefited by a like expenditure 
on pine-apples or expensive cigars except those who eat and 
smoke them. At the same time it is a matter that concerns 
the spenders only. If they demanded even what in our 
opinion are more useful things, nobody else would benefit, un- 
less, of course, they happened to be public-spirited, and were 
pleased to spend their surplus wealth on the gratification of 
their fellows. But then the question of altruism enters here, 
and no one has a riglfit to complain because his neighbour is 
not generous. One who lays out a public pleasure-ground is a 
better citizen than one who lays down a cellar of port for his 
■own drinking. Grranted ; but we have no right to coerce a 
rich man to " enjoy " his own wealth in our own way. 

There is a lamentable absence of definitions all throughout 
this Catechism, and indeed throughout all socialist works. 
What is waste ? What is useful ? One cannot understand in 
what sense the terms are employed here. By "useful" I 
mean all that affords pleasure. The barrel-organgrinder is 
very useful in an East-end alley, but not at all useful in a 
West-end square. " Flunkeys " are useful to those w^ho take a 
real pleasure (no matter how indirectly caused) in their ser- 
vices. And even the most cultured person finds domestic 



XI AN ANALYSIS OF SOCIALISM 355 

servants useful in doing necessary work, which he would other- 
wise have to perform himself — such as cooking and laundry 
work. Socialists cannot honestly believe that the world would 
be better if Mr. Herbert Spencer and Lord Tennyson blacked 
their own boots. Then by waste I mean the expenditure of 
wealth without a corresponding or proportionate attainment of 
pleasure. It is wasteful to use seasoned oak for fuel, because 
the pleasure effect is small — out of all proportion to the out- 
lay. But socialists regard everything as wasted which does 
not go into a poor man's belly. It is all a question of 
definition. 

All this is meant to lead up to the grand conclusion, the 
irrepressible socialist fallacy, that people who earn wealth on 
Monday cannot rest and spend it on Tuesday without robbing 
those who are working on Tuesday. That is the whole con- 
tention in a nutshell. It ought, say they, to be obvious that 
a man cannot rest and eat without being indebted to those 
who produce the food he eats. But why do the " workers " 
supply the " idlers " with food and also with luxuries ? Simply 
because the "idlers," that is the Testers, give them in ex- 
change some of the wealth for which they or their fathers 
worked in days gone by. The thing is simple enough, and 
yet it is strangely ignored. 

And then follows the socialist cure for all this, namely, 
compulsory work. But what again is work ? M'Culloch 
described bubble-blowing and turtle-eating as productive labour. 
Mr. Joynes would not dignify these occupations with the title 
of work. Then where would he draw the line ? Is dog-training 
work ? angling ? scene-painting ? If scene-painting is work, 
then acting must also be work, and probably ballet-dancing ; for 
work is defined by its end. Poets and composers and philosophers 
would cease to exist except as amateurs who dabbled in these 
studies after work hours, unless the State undertook to define 
poetry and music and philosophy, and to recognise some speci- 
mens as work. It would then be necessary to declare how many 
lines of epic (say, the Idylls of the King) should go for an 
hour's work in a smithy, or an hour's fishing on the Dogger 
Bank. Would all work be measured by time ? Then it would 
be necessary to measure the philosopher's work by the time he 



356 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

took to write out the conclusions he had reached, or else to 
allow him for thinking ; and the State would have to take pre- 
cautions to see that when he was apparently sitting still and 
doing nothing, he was, in fact, thinking. And then, if the out- 
come of his thinking was Mr. Joynes's Catechism, the State would 
have to decide whether it would rank as good work alongside 
of boot-making or as waste time alongside bubble-blowing. 
What an absurd slough this sociahsm lands us into ! Then 
follow the exceptions in favour of the " old," for which one can 
see no justification except on the ground that, as a rule, they 
may be taken to have done their work in the world. And 
this is just my case for the rich, when once it is admitted that 
a lawful and moral way of enjoying one's wealth is to make 
one's children happy. As for Mr. Joynes's exception in favour 
of the children of the State, I fail to see how they are a " per- 
fectly just charge" upon those who are not responsible for 
their existence, and who do not happen to care very much 
about them. We may pass over " the infirm " till we know 
who they are. Are born idiots included, or confirmed drunk- 
ards, or persons ruined by vice, or persons injured by accidents 
in the course of their work, or in the hunting-field ? Further 
and better particulars, please, Mr. Joynes. It is already passing 
S3lear that under a socialist system the workers would not get 
the full fruits of their labour. Our mentor glides very swiftly 
over " certain other deductions for measures of public utility." 
Wliich be they ? An army ? A navy ? Courts of justice ? 
Inspectors ? Paid legislators ? State instruct ois of youth ? 
A post-office ? Harbours and lighthouses ? What else ? 

" Theories of Profit " is the title of the next chapter of the 
Catechism. It is a pity that Mr. Joynes enshrouds the prob- 
lem with which he has to deal with the " money fog." He 
could have explained his position (the socialist position) with- 
out dragging in this political economist's dust-cloud. Money 
has nothing whatever to do with it. We are introduced to 
the crooked ways of those who make money by gambling either 
on the race-course or on the stock-exchange, in which case one 
gambler's gain is another's loss. " But another form of ex- 
change prevails, that of those who, not being workers, produce 
no goods, but yet have command of money. They exchange 



XI AN ANALYSIS OF SOCIALISM 357 

their money for goods, and those goods back again into 
money." 

I have not the pleasure of the acquaintance of any of these 
lunatics. It seems to be an innocent form of amusement ; but 
one cannot help thinking that Mr. Joynes must be uninten- 
tionally misrepresenting them. If, at the end of the double 
process, these amiable persons turn out to have, as a rule, more 
money than they began with, one would suppose they must 
have done something in addition to what Mr. Joynes has been 
able to see. N'o wonder he asks the innocent question, " Then 
what is the use of the process if they only get money at the 
end, when they had money at the beginning ? " What indeed ? 
He thinks it may be that at the second exchange they get 
more money than they gave at the first. " This fact has been 
explained by economists by the mere statement that the money- 
monger either gave less money than the goods were worth at 
the first exchange or got more than they were worth at the 
second. But they omit to note the fact that these same 
money-mongers are in the market both as buyers and sellers, 
and that without a miracle they cannot all gain on both trans- 
actions, but must lose in selling precisely the amount they gain 
in buying." The economists, then, are represented as saying 
that " the other fellow " is the lunatic. According to them, 
there is a class of persons who spend their time in exchanging 
goods for money, and in buying with that money other goods 
which are worth less than the goods they had to start with. 
Now Mr. Joynes is unable to credit the existence of this class. 
N"either does he believe in miracles. Hence he is driven to 
search for another explanation. The first that he comes across 
is that decaying old survival from anti-machinery days ; but it 
is fair to remark that he dismisses it as altogether inadequate 
to account for all the profits of capitalists who do not work. 
Indeed it is too small, he says, " to account for a tithe 
of it." 

" Does not this add exchange value to his productions ? Not unless 
he lias a monopoly of the macMne, and can thus fear no competition ex- 
cept that of hand labour ; otherwise the exchange value of his goods sinks 
in proportion to the increased rapidity of their production. If he can 
make two yards of cloth in the time which he formerly devoted to one, 
and all other weavers can do the same, the price, or exchange value of 



358 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS CHAr. 

two yards, sinks to the former price of one ; though of course the use 
value of two is always greater than that of one. 

" Are not monopolies frequent ? No individual capitalist can keep a 
monopoly for any great length of time, as all inventions become common 
property at last ; and although it is true that the capitalists as a body 
have a monopoly of machinery as against the workers, which adds a 
fictitious value to machine-made goods, and will continue to do so until 
the workers take control of the machinery, yet this extra value is too 
small to account for a tithe of the profits of the money-mongers." 

All this seems to show that, reluctantly enough, socialists 
recognise that capital of, at all events, one kind has the 
"power of creating exchange value in excess of its own cost." 
Mr. Joynes prefers to say that labour is itself rendered more 
productive by being placed in juxtaposition with this kind of 
capital ; just as we might say (with perfect truth) that when 
coals are thrown into the fire-box, it is not the coals which 
have the power of creating more motive - power ; it is the 
engine which accelerates its speed and increases its productive- 
ness, owing to the fact that the coals are there. Mr. Joynes 
would argue that the owner of the engine should have all the 
resulting gains, and the owner of the coals none. Let that 
pass ; another explanation has to be found, and this time it is 
to a certain extent a substantial explanation. It is not 
sufficient, because it does not explain nearly all the profit of 
the capitalist ; but it is true, becau.se it does explain a great 
part of it. 

" There must be one thing needful which they must be able to buy 
in the market in order to make these profits, something which shall itself 
have the power of creating exchange value largely in excess of its own 
cost, in order that, at the end of the transaction, they may have secured 
more money than they have expended. There is only one thing with 
this power, and that is the labourer himself, who offers his labour force 
on the market. Competition compels him to be content with its cost 
price, namely, subsistence wages — that is, enough to keep himself and his 
family from starvation." 

This is the great truth contained in socialism — the jewel 
in the dungheap. There is a soul of truth in almost all false 
doctrines, and this is the truth which almost justifies the 
existence of socialism. Too much stress cannot be laid upon 
it. The orthodox political economists not only ignore it, but 



XI AN ANALYSIS OF SOCIALISM 359 

flatly deny it. Wage receivers do not receive more and never 
can receive more, permanently, than subsistence wages, all the 
fallacious arguments of the economists to the contrary not- 
withstanding. I sincerely trust that thorough and consistent 
socialism will spread and prosper until this truth is firmly 
grasped and acted upon by the manual workers of this and 
other countries. " The bargain between him and the capitalist 
requires him to give ten hours or more of work for the cost 
price of two or three ; and he enters into it because, in spite 
of all so-called freedom of contract, he has no other choice." 
To contend that the majority of citizens in a free country have 
no choice but to put up with a bad bargain is the height of 
absurdity. I am quite ready to admit that a part of the profit 
which goes to the capitalist should properly go to the manual 
worker ; and it ivoulcl go to the manual worker if he had the 
courage and energy to ask for it. Instead of that he compels 
the capitalist to hire him by time or by the piece, come luck, 
come loss ; and for this insurance surely the employer must 
charge. Why should he run a risk for nothing ? If Mr. 
Joynes ran his own omnibus from Bow to Brixton he would 
expect to get a profit on his outlay. If, in addition, he also 
ran my omnibus over the same line, at a hire of £3 a week, 
payable to me for 'bus and horses — win or lose — he would 
also expect to make a profit on that. So the employer of 
wage receivers expects not only a profit on his own capital, 
but also a profit on his workpeople. He pockets the profits 
which they forego ; but then they incur no risk of loss. And 
the effect of their cowardly policy is just this — that they 
forfeit all along the line the average profits of trade in the 
country in which they work. In other words, they give away 
the interest on that valuable property — their own selves,. 
Perhaps some blame does attach to employers as a class for not 
exerting themselves to enlighten their employees as to their 
true interest ; but the chief blame rests with the workers 
themselves, who voluntarily submit to wagedom when the 
times are ripe for a higher form of industrial organisation. It 
must be obvious that by shirking their share of risk, wage 
receivers seriously impair their own efficiency, and thereby 
again diminish their gains. They will wake up some day 



36o INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

without any assistance from socialism or from mawkish 
philanthropy. 

" Has the capitalist no conscience ? " asks the catechist. 
" Individuals cannot alter the system, even if they would, and 
the capitalist is now often represented by a company, which, if 
it had a conscience, could not pay its 5 per cent. After the 
labourer has produced the price of his own wages, he goes on to 
produce exchange value, for which he is not paid at all, for the 
benefit of the capitalist." And this, says he, is surplus value. 

Mr. Joynes is very angry with the capitalist. What does 
he do with the surplus value ? he asks. " He keeps as much 
as he can for himself under the name of profits of his business." 
And quite right, too. He keeps all the profits on his raw 
materials and tools, his land and plant, his machinery and 
horses, and slaves (if any) and wage slaves, and everything 
else which he has to buy or hire, and for the investment of 
which he is himself responsible. Mr. Joynes seems to think he 
does not keep it all, but he does, every penny of it. Of course 
he has to buy his raw materials and plant, and to feed his 
horses and find fuel for his engines ; to pay rent for the '' loan " 
of the land he uses (if it is not his own property), and wages 
or rent for the loan of the labourers he uses (if they are not his 
own property), and so forth. It matters little what we call these 
payments. He has to pay them, and he expects his profit, and, as 
a rule, he gets it ; and when he gets it he sticks to it. Mr. Joynes 
thinks he does not keep quite all, because out of it he has to 
pay landlords, other capitalists from whom he has borrowed 
capital, bankers and brokers who have effected these loans for 
him, middlemen who sell his wares to the public, and finally, 
the public, in order to induce them to buy from him instead 
of from rival manufacturers. " And he tries to justify this 
appropriation of surplus value by his class on the ground that 
capital has the power of breeding and producing interest by 
as natural a process as the reproduction of animals." 

Yes, so far as the profits on his own capital are concerned, 
he does so persuade himself, if he thinks at all. Some do not. 
He has seen apples grow on an apple-tree without any human 
assistance whatever, and he has seen a windmill working away 
without any more than the smallest help from man ; he has 



XI AN ANALYSIS OF SOCIALISM 361 

seen machinery producing wealth out of all proportion to the 
labour which is expended in attending to it. He fails to see 
anything absolutely inconceivable in the idea of a monster 
engine worked by concentrated solar heat or tidal action which, 
without any assistance from living men, shall produce, con- 
tinuously, articles of use to a lazy generation. He regards 
this as highly improbable, even in the distant future ; but 
inasmuch as it is not inconceivable, it completely knocks the 
bottom out of the socialist notion that only the living workers 
have a right to the products of industry. 

It is odd, thinks our author, that the capitalist can find any 
dupes to believe in so absurd a theory, but he instils a genuine 
belief into himself and others that this is the case. " From 
which the inference is, that the labourer ought to be grateful 
to the capitalist for furnishing him with employment. Whereas, 
the labourers really have to thank the capitalist for defrauding 
them of three-quarters of the fruits of their toil, and rendering 
leisure, education, and natural enjoyment almost impossible for 
them to attain." I am glad to be among the " dupes," and am 
much obliged to Mr. Joynes for giving some of us credit for a 
genuine belief. But the inference as to the labourer's 
gratitude does not follow. No thanks are due either way. 
Each does the best he can for himself, and asks for no 
testimonials. 

The eighth chapter of the Catechism deals with " objections " ; 
but that title would not be enough. Mr. Joynes must knock 
his antagonist down before shaking hands ; so the chapter is 
entitled " Inadequate Objections." Most people would prefer 
to prove the inadequacy of the objections before stigmatising 
them ; but socialists will be socialists. If socialists happen to 
be poor, he says, they are described as interested schemers for 
the overthrow of an excellent society in order that, being them- 
selves idle and destitute, they may be able to seize upon the 
wealth accumulated by more industrious people. If rich, they 
must obviously be insincere in their socialism, or they would 
at once give away all their capital, instead of denouncing what 
they themselves possess. The charge of interested motives 
is invariably brought by socialists against all who uphold 
existing institutions. And how should individualists meet the 



362 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

charge ? With contempt. The idea that those who prosper 
under the present just system have no right to uphold it 
because they are gainers by it, is too absurd to require refuta- 
tion. Persons who fling this charge about on either side may 
safely be left out of calculation. But the charge against the 
rich socialists requires a little more attention. 

"In a capitalist society, the mere purchasing of an article in the 
market involves the exploitation of the labourers who produced it ; and 
this is not in any way remedied or atoned for by giving away the article 
afterwards to somebody else. The owner of capital cannot prevent it from 
exploiting the labourers by giving it away. It cannot be used as 
socialism enjoins, except under an organised system of socialism. The 
wealthy socialist can mitigate the severity of competition in all his per- 
sonal relations. Beyond that he could do nothing except use his wealth 
in helping on the socialist cause." 

There is an element of truth in all this ; but it is not quite 
accurate. It is correct to say that the wealthy capitalist with 
socialist leanings cannot, after making his profits by wagedom, 
remedy or atone for it by giving it away to somebody else, but 
there are two things he might do : he might give back 
his profits, not to somebody else, but to the workpeople who 
earned it for him ; or, secondly, he could refrain from employing 
wage earners at all, and insist on co-operating with free 
labourers for the production of new wealth. Of course I do not 
recommend either expedient, but I say that they are both open 
to honest and wealthy socialists. 

Clearly, if a capitalist adopted the first course, namely, that 
of returninoj the interest on labour to the labourers, he would 
be running all their risk for nothing, while they would have 
lacked all the stimulus to industry which such risk (and cor- 
responding chance of gain) affords. If he adopted the second 
course, which at some future time will be a prudent course, he 
would have to spend most of his time in looking round 
for thrifty, provident, honest, and industrious co-workers, who 
know their own value, and are willing to invest their labours 
and take the risks. Such men are not easy to find to-day, 
because our manual workers have hardly yet emerged from the 
wagedom stage of industrialism. Just as slaves could not be 
converted into wage earners in a generation, so neither can 



XI AN ANALYSIS OF SOCIALISM 363 

wage earners be transmuted at once into free workers. They 
lack mutual trust. 

How may socialists reply to the taunt that their scheme 
is impracticable ? " By quoting the opinion of J. S. Mill that the 
difldculties of socialism are greatly over-rated ; and they should 
declare that, so far from being an impracticable Utopian 
scheme, it is the necessary and inevitable result of the historical 
evolution of society." Now the quotation from Mill merely 
shows either that Mill himself under-rated the difficulties of 
socialism, or that he used the term in a sense different from 
that in which it is nowadays understood. For the second retort, 
namely, that socialism is inevitable, I cannot give Mr. Joynes 
much credit. I might with equal eloquence rejoin, " It isn't." 

And now we are introduced to a remarkable confusion 
of ideas, with which socialists invariably try to cajole the 
advocates of any form of co-operation — the pretence that all 
co-operation is socialistic. As though there were no difference 
between voluntary co-operation and compulsory co-operation. 
This is exactly the vfliole difference between socialism and indi- 
vidualism; for both look forward to increased co-ordination 
of industry. It is therefore no proof of advancing socialism 
to point out the fact of an increasing tendency towards co- 
operative production. 

And here we come to a compromising and even damning 
admission. Individualism has, we are told, prepared the way 
and rendered socialism practicable. Socialists are to take 
advantage of the good which indi^ddualism has done. But if 
the results of individualism up to the present are satisfactory, 
and even essential to further progress, one may be excused for 
suggesting that it might be as well to let it alone, and trust to 
its further development. A system which has worked well 
from the year one down to to-day may surely be tried a little 
longer before being condemned. " Cut it down ; why cumbereth 
it the ground?" is not a wise sentence, even in the case of a tree 
which produces no fruit : still less of one which admittedly 
produces good fruit. 

It is not necessary to dispute the proposition that if the 
State were to " take into its own hands," that is, to steal (Mr. 
Joynes is sometimes very fond of that word ! ) the capital of 



364 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

capitalists, and to divide its proceeds among the workers only, 
the workers would gain by the arrangement, pecuniarily, for 
a few years. Similarly, if the railways were taken away from 
those who own them and given to the shipowners or the 
omnibus conductors, the latter would be gainers. I am super- 
stitious enough to hold that stolen riches never bring lasting 
prosperity; but I admit the recipients would temporarily be 
wealthier for the " transaction." There is no better illustration 
of the inefiiciency of State trading than that adduced by Mr. 
Joynes himself — the post-ofiice. Is he really ignorant of the 
reason why private capitalists cannot compete with the State ? 
Is he not aware that the State rigidly enforces its monoply in 
the most tyrannical and overbearing manner, and that, but 
for this, it would long ago have been so far out-distanced by 
private enterprise as to be a laughing-stock and an eyesore ? 
The same precaution might, it is true, be taken in the case of 
State railways ; and then, surely enough, private enterprise 
would be unable to compete. But remove the heavy hand of 
the State, and I will give Mr. Joynes the whole of the existing 
capital of the country to start with (without compensation), and 
undertake to leave him and his state miles behind in the race 
in half a dozen years. I fear he has never studied the history 
of the railway system in India, or compared the progress of 
railways on the Continent and in England. I would also com- 
mend to his notice the writings of Lysander Spooner on State 
letter-carrying. 

And now the question arises. Would the expropriated 
capitalists be entitled to compensation ? The reply is note- 
worthy. " As a matter of principle it is unjust to compensate 
the holders of stolen goods out of the pockets of those who 
have suffered the theft ; but it might be expedient to grant 
some compensation in the shape of annuities." JSTo. Injustice 
is never expedient. If capitalists have really stolen their 
wealth, it cannot be expedient to compensate them for re- 
storing it to the rightful owners. Here we must be more 
uncompromising than the socialists themselves. But first 
show how a man who has refrained from at once consuming 
the produce of his labour can be said to have stolen it when 
an interval of time has elapsed between its production and its 



XI AN ANAL YSIS OF SOCIALISM 365 

consumption. This plunder part of his program is evidently 
very distasteful to Mr. Joynes himself. He glides quickly over 
it. He proposes a compromise and compensation. And he 
passes rapidly on to a more congenial topic — the tendency of 
the evolution of society. It tends, we are told, always towards 
more complex organisation, and to a greater interdependence 
of all men upon each other ; each individual becoming more 
and more helpless by himself, but more and more powerful as 
part of a mightier society. And yet, says he, it is not true 
that individuality would be crushed by socialism.. On the 
contrary, it is crushed by the present state of society, and 
would then alone be fairly developed. 

Yes, individuahty is sorely crippled by wagedom ; but it 
would be altogether paralysed by socialism. Freedom is a 
slow development. It must be worked out on the present 
lines without any breach of continuity or artificial cataclysm. 
The increasing dependence of man upon his fellows — upon 
society as an organism — is an undeniable fact, which indi- 
vidualists recognise as readily as sociahsts : — 

" Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore, 
And the individual withers, and the world is more and more." 

The whole history of civilisation is the history of a struggle 
to establish a relation between society and its units, which is 
neither absolute socialism nor absolute anarchy (in the old and 
absurd sense of the absence of co-ordination and voluntary 
regulation), but a state in which, by action and reaction of 
each upon each, such an adaptation shall take place that the 
welfare of the whole, and that of the units, shall eventually 
become coincident and not antagonistic. 

ISTo class of persons, as a rule, speak so contemptuously of 
authority as socialists. It is therefore surprising what delight 
they always manifest when they can exhume any passage from 
the works of leading poHtical economists which can be twisted 
into something like an approval of their theories. Mr. Joynes 
quotes Mill and Fawcett. Mill says : " The restraints of 
communism would be freedom in comparison with the present 
condition of the majority of the human race. The generality 
of labourers in this and most other countries have as little 



366 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

choice of occupation or freedom of locomotion — are practically 
as dependent on fixed rules and on the will of others — as they 
could be in any system short of actual slavery." Fawcett is 
cited as saying that there is no choice of work or possibility of 
change for the factory hand, and that the boy who is brought 
up to the plough must remain at the plough-tail to the end of 
his days. There is nothing in this with which individualists 
quarrel. Every capitalisationist affirms the evil of wagedom 
quite as emphatically as Mill himself, or the socialists. Two 
medical men may agree about a disease without for a moment 
concurring as to the proper cure. 

But let us see what these witnesses have to say about the 
proposed cure. Mill's essay " On Liberty " is too well known 
to need quotation. It is one long indictment of socialism. 
Take this passage from the fifth chapter : " If the roads, the 
railways, the banks, the insurance ofiices, the great joint-stock 
companies, the universities, and the public charities were all of 
them branches of the Government ; if, in addition, the munici- 
pal corporations and local boards, with all that now devolves 
on them, became departments of the central administration ; if 
the employees of all these different enterprises were appointed 
and paid by the Government, and looked to the Government 
for every rise in life, not all the freedom of the Press and 
popular constitution of the Legislature would make this or any 
other country free otherwise than in name. And the evil 
would be greater, the more efficiently and scientifically the 
administrative machinery was constructed, the more skilful the 
arrangements for obtaining the best qualified hands and heads 
with which to work it." Mr. Fawcett's pamphlet on State 
Socialism is less known. He ends it by saying : " The con- 
clusion which, above all, we desire to enforce is that any 
scheme, however well-intentioned it may be, will indefinitely 
increase every evil it seeks to alleviate if it lessens individual 
responsibility by encouraging the people to rely less upon 
themselves and more upon the State." If these are the 
authorities Mr. Joynes puts forward on behalf of socialism, he 
is welcome to the support he obtains. But of course the case 
is not left to rest on authority. It has been urged against 
socialism that it will take away all the incentives to exertion, 



XI AN ANALYSIS OF SOCIALISM 367 

and induce universal idleness in consequence. " On the 
contrary," says our author, "it will apply the strongest 
incentive to all alike, for all must work if they wish to eat, 
while at present large classes are exempted by the accident of 
birth from the necessity of working at all." And to the 
objection that socialism will destroy culture and refinement 
by compelling the leisured classes who have a monopoly of 
them to do some honest work, he replies that on the contrary 
it will bring the opportunity of culture and refinement to all 
by putting an end to the wearisome labour that continues 
all day long ; while the leisured class will learn by experience 
that work is a necessity for perfect culture. 

Mr. Joynes has not yet mastered the moral of the fable of 
the Sun and the Wind. He does not distinguish between 
persuasion and force. He jumbles up together as incentives 
to industry the love of knowledge and the ambition of the 
scholar with the birch rod of the pedagogue. In a sense these 
may all be said to be incentives to work. But those which 
socialism would relax are the internal incentives ; those which 
socialism would substitute for them are external — coercion. 
It would certainly be better for everybody if those among the 
leisured classes who, having enough to live on, prefer to idle 
away their time, could be induced or persuaded to work at 
something useful to mankind. It would also be better for 
themselves. Most of their class do. But to coerce those who 
do not choose to work would be to place the liberties of one 
set of citizens in the keeping of another set. Possibly Mr. 
Joynes would make an excellent task-master. I believe he 
has had some experience in furnishing incentives to industry 
to leisured specimens of the rising generation. I do not wish 
to be understood as implying that Mr. Joynes would not make 
the best task -master procurable. My contention is that 
liberty is better than any task-master ; and that in the long 
run it will bring about the best quality and most desirable 
quantity of work. " Wearisome labour that continues all day 
long " is inefficient labour. The best quality of labour is that 
which cannot be continued all day long. Slovenly, shirking, 
scamping drudgery can hardly be dignified with the title of 
labour at all. The incentives of the stick and the sack do not 



368 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

stimulate to the highest quahty of industry. The best work 
is even now done by the leisured class under a short-hours' 
system. And if, as Mr. Joynes contends, " work is a necessity 
for perfect culture " (which I admit), so culture is a necessity 
for perfect work. We have a great field before us in trying to 
reform the tasUs of all classes. Labour is wasted in supplying 
that for which there may indeed be an effectual demand, but 
which affords an absurdly small amount of gratification in 
proportion to its labour cost. This cannot be changed by 
State action. 

When we urge that State management would give rise to 
jobbery and corruption, he replies by pointing to the present 
State organisation of the police and the post-office, in neither 
of which are jobbery and corruption conspicuous features. It 
is odd to find a leading socialist proclaiming the purity of the 
police. Perhaps I may refer to the socialist organs for a 
refutation of this amiable contention. A Eadical member 
of Parliament lately declared that, to his knowledge, nearly 
all the unfortunate women in his neighbourhood paid black- 
mail to the police. Mr. Joynes might find corroborative 
evidence of this if he would make a tour of the public-houses 
and ascertain the conditions of their freedom from police 
esjDionage and interference. As for the post-office, I will 
refer not to the organs of socialism, but to the organs of 
individualism for the proofs of official purity or the reverse. 
A few questions have in the present Parliament been asked 
of Mr. Eaikes about some singular promotions in the post- 
office. But apart from corruption, what about the more 
crushing charge of inefficiency and incapacity ? Take the 
telegraph department or the parcels post. Or compare the 
success of a private firm of letter-carriers in America with 
that of the State department, even when the former was 
handicapped to the extent of 6 per cent ! If no better 
examples of State action can be adduced on behalf of the 
State socialism of the future than the police and the post- 
office, the less said the better. Socialists would do well to 
rely on the magnificence of the unknown. 

Having demolished these objections to his own satisfaction, 
Mr. Joynes proceeds to pulverise another, which it is not my 



XI AN ANALYSIS OF SOCIALISM 369 

business to sustain — the cuckoo cry — that if you make all 
men equal to-day they will all be unequal to-morrow, because 
of their different natural capabilities. But, says he, what 
socialists aim at is equality of opportunities, not of natural 
powers. There are scores of unnoticed objections to socialism 
besides the " cuckoo cry," which no individualist ever puts 
forward, except in reply to some of the cruder proposals of 
ignorant communists, to whom it is neither necessary nor wise to 
reply at all. If the " cuckoo cry " has ever been raised by an 
interlocutor to the " scientific socialism " advocated by the author 
of the Catechism, it must be that such interlocutor was a bad 
advocate of a good cause, and not worth powder and shot. 

Mr. Joynes proceeds to expound the doctrine that those 
who are especially gifted by nature owe a larger return to the 
community than those who are less naturally gifted. But why 
should we repay to the community what we owe to nature ? 
Why pay B what A has lent us ? 

" But capitalists, instead of acknowledging this debt, 
arrange!' says our teacher, " that persons of extra industry and 
talent shall have every opportunity of enslaving their less 
fortunate neighbours, thus adding an inequality of conditions 
to the natural inequality of talent." 

" Capitalists arrange ! " How can capitalists arrange to 
enslave their fellow-citizens ? Are they strong enough to 
resist a combination of their less fortunate neighbours, if those 
neighbours refuse to fall into the arrangement ? If so, Mr. 
Joynes may as well stop his preaching. He and the "less 
fortunate neighbours " will have to do as they are told. The 
strong will have their way. But if the "less fortunate 
neighbours " are capable of putting a stop to this one-sided 
" arrangement," why do they not do it ? There is no need for 
socialism. Those who are capable of inaugurating a socialistic 
regime are equally capable of breaking up the present arrange- 
ment by which certain persons (presumably weaker than them- 
selves) pocket the proceeds of their work. Mr. Joynes does 
not tell us how the weak can arrange to despoil the strong. 
N"or, on the other hand, if the despoilers are the strong, how 
the weak are going to shear them of their Samson locks by 
the mere process of talking sociahsm. 

2 B 



370 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

We have now reached the ninth chapter, entitled " Gkits 
and their Eesults." It should be carefully read and considered 
by all. It is well and clearly put, and, but for a few hints at 
the cure for the evil, might have been written by a capitalisa- 
tionist. It may be divided into two parts, which, unfortunately, 
are inextricably woven together. The one part describes the 
evil to be remedied, and points out the futility of the proposals 
of " reformers," and is, in the main, admirably done. The 
other part sets forth the remedy proposed by socialism. This 
part is clearly and ably written, but embodies some fundamental 
fallacies, and would, if accepted, result in national disaster — 
the very first to suffer being the wage receivers, in whose 
interest it is put forward. The chapter now under considera- 
tion belongs for the most part to the pathological division of 
the subject, and demands very little adverse criticism, except 
in so far as it attributes the e\dls to the wilful malfeasance of 
a particular class of persons. 

The periodical depression of trade, with its accompanying 
distress among the labourers, is said to be due to the fact that 
individualist capitalists are striving to enrich themselves alone, 
instead of co-operating to supply the needs of the community. 
"During a period of activity, when prices are high and the 
markets for goods are not overstocked, a great competition goes 
on among capitalists, who wish to take advantage of the high 
prices and produce more quickly the goods which can command 
them. And the effect of this competition is that all the 
available labourers are employed ; all the machinery is set 
going ; and no effort is spared by the manufacturers to produce 
the utmost quantities of the goods which are in demand on the 
market." 

Truly, the love of money is the root of much evil ; but 
under a system of capitalisation, that is, of free labour, 
capitalists would not receive such abnormally enhanced profits 
(by " capitalists " I here mean the owners of non-human capital), 
and the workers would be less likely to push a rising market 
to extremes. And what, it is asked, is the inevitable result ? 
A glut is shortly created of these goods. Far more than were 
wanted have been made. All the store-houses are full and no 
more purchasers are to be found. The capitalists soon get 



XI AN ANALYSIS OF SOCIALISM 371 

tired of heaping up what they cannot sell, and wish to stop 
production. They turn off all their extra hands, and propose 
such a reduction of wages that the rest agree to strike rather 
than accept it. Production is stopped for a time, and the 
capitalists are not obliged to pay wages, or else agree to pay 
only for half time until the glut has gradually disappeared as 
the goods are absorbed by the public. A fresh demand arises. 
The workers are all employed again, and the glut recurs with 
the utmost regularity. !N"ow there is not the smallest neces- 
sity, says Mr. Joynes, for this periodical distress. 

In the main this is true, but as a statement it is surely a 
little dogmatic. Will it be denied that slavery itself was 
necessary at an earlier stage of industrial evolution ? Wage- 
dom is necessary now ; but whether the day is not nigh when 
it will no longer be necessary, with all its concomitant gluts 
and strikes and distress, is the question we want to find the 
answer to. 

Here is a queer passage which seems to show the cloven 
hoof of despotism, always to be found under the garments of 
socialism. Mr. Joynes must be taken to aim at the enthrone- 
ment of some High Priest of Humanity who knows better than 
his fellow-creatures what is good for them, and who is endowed 
with powers to compel them to make what he thinks useful or 
desirable instead of what they themselves choose to make : 
" That which vitiates the whole system of production at present 
is the prevailing idea that goods are not to be produced for the 
sake of their usefulness, but for the sake of making a profit for 
capitalists and giving employment to labourers." But surely 
it is the demand of the general consumer which causes things 
to be made ; the profit of capitalists is merely the intermediate 
cause. Of course if there were no effectual denaand for 
ap^parently useless things, there would be no profit in making 
them. If a tawdry chromo gives more pleasure to the 
frequenters of an inn-parlour than one of Meissonier's finest 
masterpieces, the chromo is actually the more useful of the two 
for the inn-keeper's purpose. Mr. Joynes wants a high priest 
to forbid the creation of works of bad art. Individualists may 
regret the prevalence of bad taste in all things, but they hold 
that the consumer is the only judge of what is useful. If 



372 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

" cheap and nasty " wares drive dear and sound wares out of 
the market, that is the fault of the consumer — of the people 
themselves, whose tastes are imperfectly educated. Besides, 
the State has no right to call things nasty if they please those 
who demand them. Mr. Joynes may call them nasty, and we 
may agree with him, but to the State nothing is nasty except 
that which the people dislike. Adulteration is not bad when the 
purchaser prefers a cheap and adulterated article. Fifteen carat 
gold is no nastier than eighteen carat. Some men would prefer 
three shoddy coats of different cut and colour to one broadcloth 
coat which would outwear the whole three, provided the three 
coats cost altogether no more than the one coat. In that case 
the shoddy coats are more useful than the broadcloth. 

When fraud comes in, the case is altered. But large 
profits are not the cause of fraudulent adulteration. The con- 
sumer is again to blame. His foible is cheapness in disregard 
of quality. And the manual workers are the greatest sinners 
in this respect. I have no wish to make light of adulteration. 
Union is the cure for fraudulent adulteration. For open 
adulteration there is no cure but steady reform of the people's 
taste. There is no more hideous sight on this disfigured earth 
than a party of workpeople in their " Sunday clothes." And 
surely the abominations which do duty for " ornaments " in 
their houses cannot be set down to poverty. A cultured person 
would find it both cheaper and pleasanter to be without such 
ornaments. 

Mr. Joynes is justly wroth with those well-meaning 
reformers who do not understand the labour question, but who 
are constantly calling on the workers to be sober and thrifty. 

"As addressed to tlie individual struggling against liis neighbours 
under the capitalist system, this advice is excellent. It may enable him 
to rise into the capitalist class, that is, to exchange his position in the 
ranks of the oppressed for one in those of the oppressors. But as a 
panacea for the wrongs of the system, or as a cure for the sufferings of 
the labourers as a class, it is inadequate, because a general improvement 
in intelligence, thrift, and sobriety, if shared by the whole class of 
labourers, merely supplies the capitalist class with a better instrument 
for the production of surplus value." 

Such also is the result of improvement in the ability of the 
workers under the present system. It is not easy to improve 



XI AN ANALYSIS OF SOCIALISM 373 

upon all this. So long as the workers accept wages it is useless 
to hope for a general improvement in their condition. Individu- 
ally they may become better instruments of production, in which 
case a larger number of them may be enabled to exist on the 
planet. Some people would define civilisation itself by this 
feature. For example, M. Eugene Simon, in his work on 
China, says : " We speak of that state as most civilised in 
which on a given area the largest possible number of human 
beings are able to procure and distribute most equally among 
themselves the greatest amount of wealth, liberty, justice and 
security." It is true that this trait is, as a rule, an accompani- 
ment of high civilisation, but it is not the essential attribute of 
it. If life is in itself a good, then the more the merrier. Let 
us have a well-packed planet : 

" But what is life ? 
'Tis not to stalk about and draw fresh air 
From time to time, or gaze upon the sun j 
'Tis to be free. When hberty is gone, 
Life grows insipid, and has lost its rehsh." 

It is hard to see of what use a large population is, unless 
the life is a happier and more beautiful life than that now lived 
in " civilised countries " by the great bulk of the people. 
Doubtless thrift, sobriety, hard work, and above aU "Mal- 
thusianism," give those who practise them an advantage in 
competing with other individual workpeople similarly situated. 
And to this extent the advice is sound ; but it should not be 
overlooked that while thrift and parsimony, if general, would 
increase population, the Malthusian practise would not tend to 
diminish it. The richer classes invariably adopt the plan of 
late marriages, and middle-class people of moderate means 
adopt other prudential restraints ; and it is sensible advice to 
the still poorer classes to follow their example. But from a 
Eace point of view the advice must be justified (if at all) on 
very different grounds from those usually adduced. Is it wise 
to check the increase of wise people while that of the im- 
prudent goes on with increased facility by reason of the gap 
left by their more provident fellows ? And yet self-control 
brings unforeseen blessings in its train. 



374 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

Mr. Joynes excuses social reformers on the ground that 
they seem incapable of understanding either the inefficiency in 
one way or the efficacy in another of their well-meant advice 
to the labourers as a class. I am not disposed to credit 
" social reformers " with the degree of incapacity necessary to 
justify them in preaching the doctrines they do. There is 
something a little worse than incapacity about the sleek 
preacher who goes up to men living on subsistence wages, or, 
perhaps, altogether out of work, and recommends them to try 
" thrift." At the same time thrift falls into the category of 
the self-regarding virtues, and does not deserve all the hard 
things said of it by those who see that it is of no use as a 
class panacea. 

Our author rejects the Malthusian doctrine. He says it is 
perfectly true that a limited space of land cannot support an 
unlimited number of people, but as even England, to say 
nothing of the world, has not reached that limit to population, 
it has at present no bearing on the case. The Chinese seem 
to have recognised this truth. " In regard to population," says 
M. Simon,^ "the Chinese far exceed us (the French), and while 
we complain of the excess of ours, which we endeavour to 
restrain by wars, celibacy, and voluntary sterilisation, the 
Chinese continue to multiply as if the earth were without 
limits. Correctly enough ; they have no fear of the result, for 
the fertility of the land depends not upon its extent but upon 
the quantity of labour applied to it." 

It is perfectly true, say the socialists, that in the present 
capitalist system the man who has no children at all is in a 
better pecuniary position than the man with a large family, 
since, just as in actual warfare, children in the modern 
competitive battle-field are an encumbrance where every man 
has to fight for his living, and maintain his family as best he 
may. But the standpoint of the Malthusians differs from that 
of the socialists, inasmuch as the former accept the basis of 
the capitalist society — namely, the existence of two distinct 
classes of wage payers and wage earners — and merely advise 
the workers to attempt to secure a larger wage. Now this 

^ China : its Social, Political and Religious Life. By G. Eug. Simon. 
Sampson Low, 1887. 



t 



XI AN ANALYSIS OF SOCIALISM 375 

result would not be attained by following the advice of the 
Malthusians, except, as I have said, by individuals. The wage- 
earning class would gain nothing by it, except the satisfaction 
of being more productive instruments for the creation of 
wealth. 

Apart from the political or social aspect of this question, 
there is an economic criticism on the above treatment of 
Malthusianism which ought to be made. Mr. Joynes makes 
the somewhat shallow " Georgian " observation that England 
has not yet reached the population limit, and that therefore 
Malthus's law does not apply. We may perhaps attribute 
this remark to carelessness ; for it is obvious that all peoples, 
civilised and savage, have reached the limit. Possibly there 
are rare occasions (though it would be difficult to point to 
them) in which the population of a tribe or nation has doubled 
every twelve and a half years. This is the rate (according to 
Euler) at which Europeans tend to increase under a system of 
unlimited supply of necessaries and absolute freedom from 
plagues, wars, etc. If wheat and meat could be had for 
nothing in the British Isles, the population would be just about 
eighty millions at the end of this century. 

The chapter closes with the usual socialistic appeal to brute 
force. It is a pity socialists make such a display of drapeau 
rouge. Every reform rests ultimately on the will of the strong. 
Socialism has no monopoly of democratic stability. ISTeither 
is there any reason (beyond its own inherent logical rottenness) 
why this doctrine should not be accepted by the effective 
majority in this country and put into practice without any 
appeal to force. It might lose its attractions for some of its 
supporters. Stripped of its fireworks and barricades and 
trumpets and little red caps, it might appear too humdrum 
and commonplace for the bulk of the party, but it would gain 
considerably in the respect of sensible men and women who 
have grown out of the heroic age. " The workers' claim is 
likely to be attended to as soon as ever the majority of the 
workers really understand their own position, and consequently 
become convinced of the advantages of socialism; and as for 
the capitalists, though appeals to justice may make isolated 
conversions of individual capitalists, nothing short of a display 



376 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

of organised force will enable the idlers, as a body, to perceive 
the advantage of taking their due share in the necessary work 
of society under a just system of socialism." It is a pity to 
cast a damper on all this ardour. Many of us also look 
forward to the day when all classes of workers will rebel 
against wagedom. When they do this they will receive the 
full fruits of their labour, neither more nor less. At present 
they forfeit the whole of the profits on their labour, with the 
indirect effect of reducing their own efficiency and removing 
the natural incentives to healthy and happy work. The 
prospect at the far end of the vista opened by capitalisation is 
quite as ravishing as, and more " realistic " than that painted 
(in lovely colours, it is true) by William Morris. It wants an 
equal artist. It is not the pictures in the socialist gallery, 
but the men at the door that shatter our nerves with the 
splitting trumpet and deafening drum. If only for ten 
minutes, please, Mr. Joynes, con sordini. 

We have now reached the tenth and last chapter of this 
singular production. It is hardly necessary to mention the 
title. IN'o work on socialism would be in order without a 
chapter entitled " Eevolution ! " To be orthodox, it ought to 
be printed in blood-colour, but we are fain to put up with 
black in a penny pamphlet printed in small type on flimsy 
paper. Unfortunately the good sense which characterises the 
Catechism throughout the other nine chapters (though inter- 
laced with fallacies) is entirely absent in this final effort. It 
must be admitted that it is difficult for a sane man to write 
anything readable on such a silly theme as revolution. It is 
absolutely necessary to intentionally jumble up two dis- 
tinct meanings of the term. All social changes, when complete, 
are styled revolutions. We constantly hear of the revolution 
brought about by the invention of the steam-engine, of revolu- 
tions in manners and in tastes, and in social habits and 
customs. But in another and a narrower sense the word is 
u.nderstood to signify the upheaval of the governed classes 
against their rulers — a successful rebellion. The attempt to 
confound the revolution of printing with the democratic irrup- 
tion under Oliver Cromwell is simply to play upon words — to 
make a heavy joke at the expense of the gaping fat-heads who 



XI AN ANALYSIS OF SOCIALISM 377 

usually do duty for the advance guard of socialism. Mr. 
Joynes stoops to perpetrate this antic, as we shall see ; but 
he begins by pointing out a real evil in competition. It tends 
to retard the evolution of altruism. No one disputes it. 
There is never a rose without a thorn, as the lying proverb 
truly says. It must be shown that the evil outweighs the 
good before it can be held to condemn the source of both. 
And as for saying that Man rises superior to Nature, and that 
he is not subject to natural laws, no one's i'pse. dixit is enough 
to sustain such a contention. Men can alter their surroundings, 
while lower animals cannot, we are told. But if some men 
not only can, but do alter their surroundings for the better, 
and maintain the change, then it surely follows that such men 
were and are the fittest. If Mr. Joynes believes that it is 
the destiny of man to live in filth, foul air, and squalor, it is 
his duty to bring men into harmony with such conditions with 
the greatest possible expedition and the least friction. It is 
cruel to keep up a class of men hostile to their destiny and 
artificially cultured against their nature. If he does not take 
this low view of humanity he should be content to remove all 
hindrances of an artificial kind ,to the operation of natural 
laws, among which is that of natural selection. 

" Capitalists defend the principle of competition on the ground that 
it brings into play a man's best qualities ; this is occasionally its result ; 
but it also brings out its worst qualities by stimulating him to struggle 
with his fellows for the relative improvement of his own position, rather 
than for the absolute advancement of the interests of all. Because in 
ordinary competition one man's gain is another's loss. The theory of 
the survival of the fittest is that the class of persons who are most fitted 
to live and propagate their race in the conditions with which it is sur- 
rounded is certain to survive the rest ; but such are the existing social 
conditions that they favour the survival of the most valueless." 

This question of the ultimate result of the survival of the 
fittest has been much debated, alike in the zoological and in 
the social world. The common fly of the window-pane seems 
to be gradually exterminating his more able-bodied relative, 
the blue-bottle. The fine old black rat of our ancestors is as 
dead as Diana of the Ephesians ; and his successor is as 
inferior to him in physique as a Cockney counter-jumper is 



378 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

inferior to a mailed warrior of feudal England. Can we then 
put our trust in natural selection ? Or shall we follow the 
socialists, and pin our faith to artificial selection ? Much 
has been done by that process among domestic animals and 
plants, and much more will be done. But we must bear in 
mind that in all such cases there is a selected type fixed upon 
by a higher mind — that of man. Is man prepared to decide 
the future type of humanity ? He must be a bold man or a 
fool who undertakes the task. Selection is either natural or 
artificial. Socialists professing evolutionism advocate artificial 
selection ; whereas individualists prefer to put their trust in 
^natural selection, because, while the good results of artificial 
selection are limited hy human prescience, those of natural 
selection are unlimited. 



foul air, and squalor of a town rookery is the crushing out of those who 
are least able to adapt themselves to these surroundings, and the con- 
sequent survival of those who are most fit for filth, but least for decent 
social life ; and the law of the survival of the fittest does not affect men 
in the same way as it affects the lower animals, because it is possible for 
men to alter their surroundings, while other animals must simply adapt 
themselves to them, whatever they may be." 

But then we are confronted with the question, What 
is the end of life ? Is it better that there should be 
one living being supremely happy, or a million fairly 
comfortable, or a thousand millions whose pains outweigh 
their pleasures ? Is consciousness itself an evil ? Would it 
not be tetter (whatever that may mean) if there were no human 
beings ? We cannot tell. But assuming that life is worth 
living — as we must if politics are worth discussing — then that 
social system which enables the largest population to get sub- 
sistence out of a given area is prima facie the best system. 
And the system of unlimited competition seems to satisfy that 
requirement. At all events, nobody has shown, or pretended 
to show, that any other system will produce a better result — 
using the word better in the sense of " productive of a larger 
sum-total of pleasure-feeling sentient beings." This weighing 
of happiness by the ton of flesh seems a coarse proceeding, but 
it is also the only mode of comparison available. However, 



XI AN ANALYSIS OF SOCIALISM 379 

Mr. Joynes does not dwell long on this aspect of the subject : 
he flies off to his orthodox socialist joke : 

" What is the revolution for which socialists strive % It is a Eevolu- 
tion in the methods of the distribution of wealth corresponding to that 
which has already taken place in the means of its production. For 
wealth is now almost entirely produced by great numbers of men 
working in concert, instead of by individual effort, as in former times ; 
while individuals still possess command of its distribution, and use their 
power in their own interests. Now, forms of government are changed 
so as to readjust them to the economical changes in the forms of pro- 
duction which have been silently evolving in the body of society by 
means of Eevolutions ; for instance, the French Eevolution of 1789." 

Here we have it — the revolution, " which has already 
taken place in the means of production," is thrown into 
the same category with the French Eevolution of 1789. 
The word Eevolution occurs seven times in this chapter, 
and each time it is spelt with a big E. The word " change " 
is spelt with a small '•' c " ; words like " feudalism," and 
" capitalism," and " aristocracy," are not printed with capital 
letters. Then why is this absurd distinction conferred upon 
the word revolution ? It is a small matter, but it is very 
significant. It is part and parcel of that rather ridiculous 
habit that socialists have contracted of tricking themselves out 
as heroes and swash -bucklers. It reminds one of little boys 
making themselves paper helmets; and there is not the 
slightest evidence to show that, like some of those valiant 
urchins, they would not run screaming away if the cat jumped 
out of the cupboard. 

Leaving Mr. Joynes in the proud possession of his big E 
and his paper helmet, let us see what ground there is for say- 
ing that the structures of states are adapted to their functions, 
as a general rule, by revolutions. The " cataclysm " theory is 
abandoned even in geology. " Sudden appearances upon the 
planet " of vegetable and animal species are not now spoken of 
except by very ill-educated persons, and those who are paid to 
disseminate untruth. Then how is it that the pioneers of a 
new political system should be found planting their founda- 
tions on the old-fashioned doctrine of " jumps " ? The only 
instance furnished by Mr. Joynes is the locally-circumscribed 
though dramatically-thrilling houleversement which took place in 



38o INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

Trance just a century ago. We are asked to regard this irrup- 
tion as the cause of the demolition of feudahsm. Doubtless 
it did accompany the consummation of that historic change in 
that part of Europe ; but how is it that feudalism disappeared 
in other parts of Europe? This sort of stuff reminds one of 
the old palaeontology. The Tigris and Euphrates have more 
than once overflowed their banks, but that does not quite 
explain the existence of " stone cockles " on the Great Orme's 
Head. We should have more faith in "scientific socialism," 
if its form and method were more in line with latter-day 
science. 

That the Erench Eevolution failed to attain its objects is 
admitted : 

" But its objects were not those at wliicli socialists aim. It was 
merely the political expression of the fact that feudalism was demolished, 
and the reign of capitalism established on its ruins. It ended in the 
overthrow of the political supremacy of the landed aristocracy, and the 
establishment of a bourgeois plutocracy ; that is, putting the political 
power into the hands of the merchants and money-lords of the middle 
class. The change in the forms of production which rendered this 
inevitable was the fact that the possession of agricultural land had ceased 
to be the chief means to the attainment of wealth. The possession of 
capital and the use of machinery had taken its place." 

To be more accurate than Mr. Joynes, agriculture had 
declined relatively to other forms of industry. Trade and 
manufacture absorbed a larger proportion of the world's 
capital. The contrast between aristocracy and plutocracy is 
altogether misleading. When the landowners were the richest 
class of the community they were the plutocrats. When the 
manufacturers and traders take a predominant part in the 
Government, so long as they are comparatively few, we have an 
aristocracy. Mr. Joynes uses the terms as though " blue blood " 
had not lost its fascination for him. The change which took 
place was simply a change from the rule of a few to the rule of 
a few more. And as time moves on, more and more are 
added to the number of the ruling class; till now, in this 
country and in Erance and America we have completed 
the change properly described as the democratic revolution. 
And I use the term without a palpitating heart or a flashing 



XI AN ANALYSIS OF SOCIALISM 381 

eye or a big E, for I have no wish to infringe the socialists' 
monopoly. 

Finally, we reach the grand consummation. There is 
something very lofty in the purity and abnegation of the 
classes who are next going to snatch at the tiller. There is no 
selfish greed about them. The " bourgeois " rebels grasped at power 
for their own " bourgeois " ends. They cared nothing for the poor 
" proletaire." Socialists are not as other men ; they do not aim 
at the supremacy of their class at the expense of other sections. 
]N'o ; they will force other sections to adopt their views, to do 
as they are bid, and to fall into the socialist section, and so 
all will be happy. " We don't wish to persecute those who 
differ from us in opinion, therefore let them be quick and adopt 
our opinion, or take the consequences." That is the gist of the 
following argument. 

"The French Eevohition was a selfish struggle, because after the 
displacement of the upper by the middle class in political and social 
supremacy, the latter estabhshed its own power irrespectively of the 
rights of any other class. But the struggle which precedes and heralds 
the Social Kevolution is not one of selfish class interests in the same way, 
for socialists do not aim at the supremacy of a class or section of the 
community at the expense of other sections. True; they wish the 
workers to control the State, but this is not the supremacy of a class, for 
they insist that every able-bodied person of sound mind should do a fair 
share of necessary work. When all are workers, the workers will be no 
longer a class, but a nation. Selfishness will then become public spirit, 
when the motives which formerly led men to work for the interests and 
advancement of themselves alone operate for the benefit of the whole 
human race with which their class has become identified." 

We shall all be Czars then, and there will be no more serfs. 
That is the end of socialism — and of the Ccdecliism. 



CHAPTEE XII 



ABSOLUTISM IN POLITICS 



Since sociology is an inductive science; since Society is an 
organism which has by no means reached its highest and final 
development ; it is clear that a system of politics based on a 
•priori reasoning is necessarily inapplicable to the concrete at any 
given stage of social evolution. When a friend asks, " What 
ought I to do under these difficult circumstances ? " one does 
not answer, " Do right," or " Choose the path of virtue." 
Similarly when a practical statesman seeks for guiding 
principles of action, it seems a mockery to say, " Study the 
greatest happiness of the greatest number," or " So act as to 
ensure the greatest liberty of each compatible with the equal 
liberty of all." And yet these and the like are the only rules 
of action furnished by the absolutist schools, be they socialist 
or individualist. Anarchy may and probably does supply a 
sound leading idea of perfection towards which we may strive, 
but it cannot furnish the working drawings from which we 
must construct our governmental machine under existing 
circumstances. In order to emphasise this distinction, I have 
thought it well in conclusion to subjoin the following letter 
addressed to Mr. Auberon Herbert on the principles under- 
lying his treatise on Compulsion hy the State} 

To tlie Hon. Auberon Herbert. 

My dear Sir — I have been reading over, very carefully for the third 
or fourth time, your booklet on Compulsion by the State, with a view 

1 Mr. Herbert has promised to reply to this letter, but pressure of work has, 
I believe, prevented his doing so up to the present. When circumstances allow 
of the fulfilment of his promise, my readers will receive a printed copy of Mr. 
Herbert's reply on application to my publishers. — W. D. 



CHAP, xii INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS 383 

to finding out tlie fundamental cause of our extreme divergence of opinion 
on certain political questions. I think you will admit that we are both 
what some people would call extreme, individualists ; and yet, " having 
offered my allegiance to liberty, prepared to follow her frankly and faith- 
fully wherever she leads," I do not find that I am " irresistibly drawn step 
by step to the same conclusions " as those set forth in your program 
{Gom'pulsion, p. 59). To me it seems that some of them are not only 
arbitrary but false. And I am therefore driven to conclude either that 
your logic is faulty, or that the principle upon which you build your 
superstructure is in some way defective. 

We agree, as you know, on so many points regarding internal legisla- 
tion and administration, that I need but glance at them in the order in 
which you mention them. 

Class A. — The abolition and reduction of State departments and 
officials seems to be rather the necessary result of narrowing the State 
functions than a deduction from the principle of liberty. So, again, the 
abolition of perpetual pensions is merely a question of political expediency. 
It cannot much matter to any one whether the State pays a deserving 
servant £20,000 in cash dow^n, or a perpetual pension of £600 a year, 
except that by adopting the latter alternative it constitutes itself 
the trustee for his successors, instead of leaving them free to squander the 
capital at their pleasure. But my reason for taking exception to your pro- 
position as it stands is that it is open to the construction — a construction 
sure to be put upon it by the " people " — that you are prepared to rob the 
present holders of perpetual pensions, whereas what you really mean is 
to buy them out for a lump sum at the usual actuarial computation. 

The next point is Free -Trade, the full scope of which you hardly, 
perhaps, in this j)lace explain with sufficient clearness as meaning free 
trade in all things, as well internal as external, in which, of course, I 
cordially concur. 

With you I should like to see the National Debt paid off as quickly 
as is compatible with the convenience of the tax-payers ; also, as far as 
possible, to make a beginning out of the proceeds of the sale of such 
national property as is not required for the efficient working of Govern- 
ment. I suppose you w^ould sell the British Museum and National 
Gallery, but not the Houses of Parliament nor Knightsbridge Barracks ? 
But beyond making a start and getting rid of a few encumbrances, I am 
afraid you would make but a small hole in the debt when all was sold, 
after which what would remain to be mortgaged, as you suggest ? When 
you speak of selling such ecclesiastical property as may be adjudged to 
belong equitably to the nation, I should first want to know who is to sit 
as judge. If the House of Commons, then I protest against having 
questions of fact as to title decided by a legislative body. 

Class B. — By all means abolish legislation creating a monopoly in the 
drink traffic. Throw open the professions of law and medicine, but 
straiten the law as to practising either under false pretences. Eemove 
legal impediments restraining the free sale of land by its owner, but 
specify what those impediments now are. Get out of the postal and 



384 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

telegraph business with as little loss as possible. And by all means let 
us devote a little careful study to the law of libel, mindful of the fact 
that it should not always be permissible to injure another even by telling 
the truth. 

Class C. — Agreed, without qualification. Do away with State educa- 
tion. State religion, and poor laws ; also with State inspection and 
regulation of factories, mines, railways, ships, etc. etc. Nothing could be 
better. 

Class D. — There is little disagreement between us as to the matters 
comprised under this heading. Repeal laws enforcing vaccination and 
compulsory notification of disease ; repeal laws imposing oaths ; laws 
imposing special observance of Sunday or any other day ; laws suppressing 
brothels, not otherwise nuisances (if any) ; laws empowering the police to 
arrest prostitutes, not otherwise nuisances ; all laws worrying persons of 
an inquiring turn of mind as to the future or the unknowable, such as 
fortune-tellers, spiritualists, and expounders of " revelations " ; laws for- 
bidding vivisection ; laws interfering with the stage and the amusements of 
the peojDle ; laws restricting the liquor traffic, and all other laws having 
similar objects. 

But I do not quite see how you can well deprive Government of the 
power to take property compulsorily, provided full compensation is paid. 

And I do not see what the State has got to do with either sanctioning 
or preventing marriage or divorce, except in so far as it is the duty of the 
State to enforce the fulfilment of a contract, or the payment of reasonable 
damages for the breach thereof. When a prepossessing woman marries 
young on the terms of a life-partnership, and is put away at the age of 
fifty, and the partnership dissolved against her will, her capital (so to 
speak) having in the meantime been exhausted for the good of the firm, it 
seems but just that, as her youth and beauty cannot be returned 
to her, some compensation should be made for breach of contract. 

As to vivisection, I suppose you would hardly repeal the Cruelty to 
Animals Acts, and the common law relating to such cruelty. It seems to 
me that here we have a case in whicli it is hard to draw a hard-and-fast 
line. Cruelty to animals is a crime in the most accurate sense of the 
term, and it is impossible for the law of civil injury to take cognisance 
of it. In this respect it is on all-fours with murder ; for neither a living 
dog nor a dead man can sue for redress of any kind. 

Class E, — Let us certainly do away, as you propose, with the thrusting 
of so-called " special " contracts upon contracting parties ; such as those 
required by the Employers' Liability Act, the Agricultural Holdings Act, 
and many others. 

So far, we are very much in accord ; and I should not have 
thought of troubling you with my points of disagreement, but that as 
soon as we come to classes F, G, and H, I find myself almost in complete 
antagonism. 

Class F. — I fail to see how the abolition of a House of Lords is a 
necessary deduction from the principle of liberty. If you had said 
" abolish the hereditary principle," that would be quite another matter ; 



XII ABSOLUTISM IN POLITICS 385 

'but surely a second chamber of notables, wbom, for past services, tbe 
people delight to honour, is an excellent part of our constitution, and has 
even in its present state, of late years, amply justified its existence. 

Neither do I see how the ballot can be defended on the plea of liberty. 
The exercise of my vote is either a right or a duty. If it is a right, you 
cannot justly prevent me from selling it for what it will fetch. If it is a 
duty, then the ballot is simply a cloak to enable me to shirk my duty by 
voting secretly against my conscience or against my professions. 

Again, the " referendum " appears to me to be opposed to all the 
principles of differentiation. It operates so as to make all citizens legis- 
lators instead of judges of legislation and choosers of legislators. It is like 
making all of us bootmakers, instead of allowing us to judge of the boots 
made by rival makers and to choose our bootmakers accordingly. It is, 
moreover, an admission of that pestilent heresy that members of Parlia- 
ment should be not representatives but delegates — mere mouthpieces. I 
do not see where liberty comes in there. 

Separation of the Indian and Home armies — apart from my humble 
opinion that it would be a move in the wrong direction and a gross 
blunder — seems to me to be a very arbitrary kind of deduction from the 
principle; and the steps of the logical process are not indicated. The 
same remark applies to the abolition of military life in barracks ; a 
proposal, I suppose, intended to be directed against militaryism as a 
system. But surely, so long as soldiers are necessary, so long as antago- 
nistic races and nations quarrel and fight, it is better to differentiate the 
special arm, and avoid as much as possible the leavening of society with 
the tastes and habits of military life. The great development of the 
volunteer system strikes me as an almost unqualified evil. It has had 
much to do with the decay of our regular army, and with the development 
of the " Jingo " spirit, and the spread of quasi-military weaknesses in all 
ranks of society. Vivisectors are necessary ; so in a lower walk of life 
are butchers ; but do not let us encourage every man to do a little amateur 
butchering and vivisecting. Let us rather withdraw State recognition 
altogether from the volunteers — leave them alone, in fact ; and abolish 
short service in the regular army, with its rusty reserve and its first line 
of incapables ; and bring back the good and natural old system under 
which a man enters the profession as a life-work on which he can rely, 
and to which he can devote himself. This, however, is merely opinion, 
but I wish to point out my inability to deduce your program hereon 
from the great principle of liberty. 

Class G. — Why should Ireland choose its own form of Government 
any more than Wales, or even Anglesey ? And if there is any good 
ethnographical reason, then why in the name of reason should the north- 
east part be allowed, as you propose, to federate with a foreign country 
against the wish of the whole of Ireland ? For precisely the same reason 
Cumberland might elect to join Ireland and break with England. 
Cumberland men are mostly of Celtic descent, and they w^ould be sorely 
tempted to embrace the Irish land system in preference to their own. 
Certainly the people of the West of Scotland would welcome the change. 

2c 



386 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

And why not ? I am bound to say that all this seems to be based on no 
principle at all ; and if anybody else had proposed it, I should say it was 
a bid for the Irish vote. As for your loan to buy out the landowners, 
it would half-ruin every tradesman in Ireland, and be an act of gross 
injustice and tyranny. Besides, who, on your own principle, would 
contribute to the taxes for interest 1 

Class H. — Kuling India mth a view to its own "approaching self- 
government," and allowing Egypt to choose her own form of government, 
seem to me to be based on a mistaken view of foreign and colonial policy, 
and of the evolution of liberty. The problem surely is, how to extend 
the Anglo-Saxon social system with the least possible cruelty to the 
existing members of the races whose political systems, sooner or later, 
must melt away before it — whether Eed Indians, Chinese, or Celts. 

I cannot see what local or municipal governments have got to do with 
the defence of person and property any more than the Stock Exchange or 
the Jockey Club ; but, on the other hand, I fail to see how municipalities 
could get on at all without general or occasional powers of compulsorily 
taking land at the full market value, with compensation for disturbance. 
How else could they cut new streets through congested districts, etc. ? I 
quite agree with what you say against compelling any person to take 
water or gas provided by a particular body, though I am not clear how 
we are to dispense altogether with the levying of a uniform rate for 
defraying such general expenses as road-making, repairing, and cleansing. 
At the same time, I fully recognise the truth and importance of what you 
say (p. 45) as to the mischief and iniquity of compulsory taxation. I 
am, as I think you know, in favour of voluntary taxation, though not 
precisely of the kind or extent you advocate, which would, I think, be to 
maintain the stingy at the cost of the generous. 

I have now run through the main points of your program, with much 
of which I am by no means in complete accord. Of course I am ready to 
admit that where all is matter of opinion (as in some of the questions 
raised) my own opinion may be a mistaken one. What, therefore, I wish 
to emphasise is the fact that extreme individualists may, and do, differ 
upon many of these important questions, and that, consequently, they are 
not " irresistibly drawn to the same or (even) very similar conclusions " 
from apparently identical premisses. This being so it seems to me some- 
what dangerous to run the risk of weakening the position and thinniug 
the numbers of the party of individual liberty by, as it were, pledging 
them to views which are outside the true province of individualism. 
Granting that your foreign policy and theory of State structure may be 
sound, still many good individualists may consistently decline to accept 
them. 

I think the weakness of your theoretical position is most apparent 
when you set forth the normal functions of the State (pp. 35-38). I do 
not wish to lay stress on the almost sophistical reasoning by which you 
endeavour to deduce your conclusion from a hard-and-fast moral principle 
of respect for the free choice and free action of others, because you your- 
self admit your distrust of, and dissatisfaction with, the argument. If 



XII ABSOLUTISM IN POLITICS 387 

we can defend a law of libel, or even a law prohibiting certain very in- 
direct forms of nuisance, on the ground that such acts or omissions are a 
constraining of the will and faculties of others, it is impossible to see 
where we shall stop. The man who (on p. 36) destroys your lettuces 
might have effected his purpose by diverting the stream in his own field, 
which formerly watered your garden. Now this question might fall 
under the Roman law of real servitude, and in England a question of 
prescription would arise ; and in either case very complicated issues might 
be involved, according as the stream took its rise in his land or elsewhere, 
according as the bed of the stream was natural or artificial, according to 
the time during which you had benefited by it, and a great variety 
of other considerations. 

In fine, the question could not be justly solved- by any appeal 
to so simple a principle as your theory seems to imply. Let us take a 
much simpler question, that of acquiring something which is the portable 
property of another — say, a valuable ruby. You may acquire this ruby 
legally or illegally, morally or immorally. And, if possible, you may draw 
the line between the two (or either of the two) at the employment of 
direct or indirect coercion. 

A. — I meet Smith in the desert ; he is in possession of a splendid 
ruby worth £10,000. I knock him down, tie his hands, rifle his pockets, 
and carry off the ruby. 

B. — Conditions the same. I hold a pistol to his head, and demand 
the ruby ; he hands it to me of his own freewill and accord, and I carry 
it off. 

C. — Conditions the same. Smith is dying of thirst ; I have a skin 
of water ; I threaten to leave him to perish unless he gives me the ruby ; 
he hands it to me, and I ride off with the ruby and the water also, and 
leave him to fate. 

D. — Conditions the same. The same bargain as in C. I carry off 
the ruby, but give him the water as agreed on. 

E. — Conditions the same. I give myself out as an expert lapidary ; 
I satisfy Smith that his ruby is only a fine but common form of amethyst, 
worth about £10 ; I buy it for that price, and sell it for £10,000. 

F. — I meet Smith in London ; he cannot find a purchaser for his 
ruby at a high price ; meanwhile, I have learnt that Jones is willing to 
give £10,000 for such a ruby ; I keep the secret, and offer Smith £1000, 
which he accepts, whereupon I sell the ruby to Jones for the full price. 

G. — I meet Smith in London ; I do not know of any likely purchaser, 
but I believe the ruby to be worth £10,000 ; I offer him £5000, which 
he accepts, and I carry off the ruby, and eventually sell it for £10,000. 

Query. — At what point does direct coercion end and indirect begin ? 
At what point does my conduct cease to be immoral ? At what point is 
it and ought it to be regarded as illegal ? 

I know that A is a case of direct coercion ; I know that it is immoral, 
and I know that it is and ought to be illegal I know that G is not a 
case of direct coercion ; I think it is not immoral, and I know that under 
the English law it is not illegal, though the Roman law provided a 

2C 2 



388 INDIVIDUALISM: A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

remedy, and I ihiiik the Koman law was wrong, and the transaction ought 
legally to stand. With respect to B, I know it is immoral and illegal, 
but I am not quite sure about direct coercion. With respect to C, D, E, 
and F, I cannot regard them as cases of direct coercion. I consider C 
immoral and illegal ; I consider D immoral, but doubt whether it should 
be illegal ; I consider E immoral, and I think it should probably be 
illegal ; I think F should not be illegal, and I am doubtful of its 
immorality. And between any two of these roughly-graduated instances 
scores of delicate shades of unfairness could be drawn, concerning which 
it would be impossible for the subtlest casuist to generalise. If this is 
the case in so simple a matter as acquiring a ruby from its possessor, how 
can we expect to be able to deduce any general rules as to private morals 
or State functions from a single principle d 'priori .^ I regard the 
attempt as futile ; and I hold that only by the experience of generations 
can any rough, practical working rules be arrived at — that is to say, by a 
process of careful induction and verification. 

And now to go a little deeper. Let us examine the first principle 
which you borrow from Mr. Spencer without, as it seems to me, sufiicient 
analysis. According to him, it is the duty and eventual tendency of 
society to allow the widest liberty to each of its component individual 
members compatible with the equal liberty of all. Now there is here no 
form of liberty excluded, not even the exercise of brute force j unless the 
exclusion of the exercise of brute force is involved in the term liberty. 
But is it ? And if so, are any other forms of force excluded — i.e. cunning, 
fraud, undue influence, etc. ? Again, if so, can all these excluded forms 
be generalised under some such class name as direct coercion ? 

If not, the liberty of each, limited alone by the like liberty of all, is 
a precise description of absolute anarchy. Says the anarchist. You are 
free to do whatever you can do ; you are free to kill me ; I am free to 
kill you. Your liberty to take my goods is limited only by my liberty to 
keep them. All is freedom — equal freedom. 

But perhaps the formula is intended to mean that you are at liberty 
to do whatever you please, so long as you do not thereby prevent me from 
doing just what it would have pleased me to do had you not been there. 
This is all very well so long as we keep out of each other's way. You do 
as you please within your ring-fence ; I do as I please within mine ; but we 
must not trespass on each other's preserves. Good I But when numbers 
increase till the ring-fences touch and press one against the other, and 
tend to overlap, what then ? What shape are the fences going to assume ? 
" Give and take ? " Good again ! But what are we respectively to give 
and take ? " You may hunt in my domain and I in yours ; but you must 
not gather the fruits on my trees, and I may not gather the fruits on 
yours." It is observed, however, that there is plenty of game in my 
forest, and very little in yours ; whereas the proportion is reversed in the 
case of the fruits. I protest against the arrangement ; it looks well on 
paper, but it works out badly in practice. Where is the necessary and 
immutable fitness of it ? Or in terms of modern life, you may starve me 
out of existence, but I may not shoot you out of existence. Why not ? 



XII ABSOLUTISM IN POLITICS 389 

Because one is direct coercion and the other indirect. And what then ? 
I prefer to make use of the direct ; it is at least more " natural." It is a 
custom common to all " God's creatures," and I decline to conform to 
your new-fangled arrangement, of which the final aim seems singularly 
fitted to your requirements, if not to mine. You are a crack shot, and I 
a good swordsman ; swords, therefore, are not fair. 

But if your underlying principle is nothing more than a deiinition of 
anarchy, your defence of Government serves equally well as a defence of 
socialism. There is nothing whatever, either in the rule or the exception, to 
furnish us with the slightest clue where to draw the line. And the same 
remark applies to Mr. Spencer's Man v. the State. There is nothing in it 
from one end to the other which gives the smallest help to a practical 
lawmaker, municipal or imperial. My neighbour may not keep pigs in 
his own back-garden ; but he may keep an ashpit full of malodorous 
refuse. Why ? Ought we to allow both, or to forbid both ; or one and 
not the other ? and if so, which, and why ? These are trivial matters ; 
but trivial matters make up the whole body of law, and neither your 
teaching nor Mr. Spencer's seems to throw the faintest light on the 
problems. And until something is done to rectify this omission, I am 
afraid our enemies are within their logical rights in stigmatising us as 
doctrinaires and hobbyriders. Let our theory be such as to answer simple 
questions like these : Why should the State enforce contract 1 Why 
should it enforce the fulfilment of one class of promises and not of 
another ? Should I be forced to compensate my neighbour for injury 
caused by me accidentally 1 Should a bankrupt who has paid over every 
shilling's worth of property he possesses outside his own skin be still 
treated as a debtor ? Should a man be entitled to receive money damages 
for an insult ? If so, on what basis should they be calculated ? Should 
a millionaire receive heavier damages from a railway company for a 
broken leg than a farm-labourer ? If so, why ? And again, should a 
railway company be liable at all for pure accidents 1 And what is an 
accident 1 Who is really the owner of a mortgaged estate 1 And who is 
the owner of a pawned watch ? And upon what theory of liberty should 
the mortgagee and the pawnbroker have priority over other creditors ? 
What is the basis of a prescriptive right ? To what extent should a 
principal be responsible for the act of his agent ? Thousands of dijQ&cult 
questions could be asked one after another, to the solution of which I find 
no guidance, either in your book or in Mr. Spencer's. And the reason is, 
as I have said before, that you have built on foundations of sand. The 
problem cannot be worked out a 'priori, but only by rigid induction. 
Why should the limit of individual liberty be a simple figure when even 
a bee's cell has eighteen sides ? In applying the deductive method to the 
concrete, disturbing causes very soon take us out of our reckonings. In 
calculating the velocity of sound, one is apt to overlook the generation of 
heat. In working out the direction of rays of light, a child would 
certainly overlook the phenomena of refraction. How much more likely 
are we to overlook some of the countless factors in a complex problem 
like that of the liberty limit ? 



390 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

Let us take an extremely simple illustration. Suppose a number of 
men were set down on a prairie, each with a given length of wire-fencing, 
each with instructions to enclose as much land as possible within his wire. 
What shape of field would be adopted % Would thej'- vary ? And what 
shape ought to be adopted % Some would mark out squares, others 
triangles, and only those who had some little knowledge of mathematics 
would properly mark out circles. Now let us suppose that they all come 
at last to adopt the circular field ; and suppose that their numbers increase 
till the circles press one upon another and it becomes necessary to close 
the interstices. What will the shape be now ? Here again a little 
knowledge of geometry will teach us that not squares, nor triangles, but 
hexagons will give the largest area of land at the least expenditure of 
wire-fencing. But now, suppose the injustice of allowing a new-born 
l^abe an equal share with full-grown men is recognised ; it is also 
perceived that a large man requires more than a small spare man, and it 
is consequently agreed that the length of each man's wire shall vary 
directly as his weight ; what will the shape tend to become on that 
understanding ? Here we are already out of depth. The result must be 
ascertained by experiment. But let us take an actual illustration. Here 
is a number of equal soft spheres. If they are all squeezed together till 
there are no spaces left between them, what will be their shape ? Will 
they be dodecahedrons, or hexagonal prisms, or what ? Well, this was 
the problem the bees had to solve, and any one can find out the solution 
by examining a honeycomb. Having done so, he can go off to a 
mathematician and quarrel over the answer. Their solution will differ for 
this reason, that the bees had to take into consideration a factor which the 
mathematician had not, namely, the gravity of the bee. Now if a 
mathematician, working out so simple a matter as the shape of a bee's 
cell, is liable to overlook one of the few factors in the calculation, how 
much the more are we certain to overlook some of the countless factors in 
calculating the shape of that cell which may be called " the Empire of the 
Individual" ? We must discard all attempts to derive just laws from a 
single high moral principle. The attempt is as vain as that of Descartes 
to recreate the universe out of a single physical principle. 

Moreover, whence sprang this grand moral principle that " a man has 
inalienable rights over himself, over his own faculties and possessions " ? 
This, even if true now, was not always true. It is meaningless when 
applied to "bears and lions," and also when applied to man's remote 
ancestors. It is an ethical statement, and is therefore highly complex. 
The very term " rights " shows this. But ex nihilo nihil Jit ! From what 
then sprang these rights inalienable ? There must have been something 
capable of giving them birth in the days before morality. What was that 
something ? Surely it is obvious that right sprang out of might. A right 
is nothing more even now than transfigured might. The force is no 
longer contained in a single right arm, but it is force; and it is spread 
over a considerable surface, and is highly complex. It appears as the 
force of law or of public opinion. It is none the less physical force when 
analysed. 



XII ABSOLUTISM IN POLITICS 39 1 

We must get at the bottom of this liberty. We are not to be put off 
with a poetical phrase. If a man is rightly, or, as a fact, the owner of his 
own faculties, it is for some better reason than " by virtue of that wonder- 
ful self which is in him." It is hardly courageous, at this point of the 
inquiry, to call in a deus ex machina. It is easy to say that " the freedom 
of a man to use either his faculties or his possessions as he himself wills, 
is the great moral fact that exists in independence of every form of govern- 
ment." Such freedom may be a right ; but surely it is not a fact. If it is a 
right — if it ought to be a fact — let us prove it by reasoning, and not by 
asserting that some great mind, which we " neither know nor understand," 
has placed it as the foundation of human society. I prefer to regard my 
rights, not as a legacy from a great mind, but as liberties which I 
exercise through the restraints which society in its wisdom places on the 
liberties of others ; out of consideration not for my welfare, but for its 
own. If it should hereafter appear that my exercise of proprietary right, 
for example, is incompatible with the lasting wellbeing of society, then 
my right ceases, and I have not even " a right to complain " ; for I have 
hitherto exercised that proprietary right not by my own strength but 
through that of the group which was at the back of me. 

When you ask, " By what title do men exercise power over each 
other ? " I answer simply enough. By the title of superior strength — 
force majeure — not necessarily muscular force, but force for all that ; and 
what is more, physical force, by which expression I wish to exclude that 
which is metaphysical or supernatural. And every title, every right, can 
be resolved by analysis into physical force. There is no other. I regret 
that you have complicated matters by dragging in altogether superfluous 
causation. If evolution will not explain morals and rights, then I think 
we had better take a deep draught of Fichte's Destiny of Man, and tie 
ourselves to the apron-strings of Blind Faith. I have no doubt Leo XIII 
is quite ready with a cut-and-dried explanation of the origin of all rights. 
I ask again, Is it prudent, is it fair, at this time, when men of science 
have tacitly agreed to drop the antiquated appeal to an indescribable 
account-for-anything sort of First Cause, to rake up the mud and raise 
the interminable controversy anew, as the prelude to the science of law '? 
Is it not clear that whether we manufacture our own premisses in the 
form of an intelligent artificer, or of a code of " natural rights," we close 
the door to reason and leave it open to the dogmas of the Kousseaus, the 
Paines, and their modern successors ? The following paragraph from 
your book (p. 22) is surely a mere paraphrase of some of Mr. Henry 
George's writings : " I see that each man is by virtue of that wonderful 
self which is in him, the owner of certain faculties and energies. I see 
that he and none other has the rightful direction and control of these 
faculties and energies. They are vested in him as an inseparable 
inalienable part of himself ; and I can see no true way in which they 
can be taken forcibly from him and owned by another. But I see that 
the exercise of these energies and faculties depends upon the observance 
of the universal law that no man shall by force restrain another man in 
the use of his faculties." 



392 INDIVIDUALISM : A SYSTEM OF POLITICS chap. 

" And I see," says Mr. George, " that every man has an equal and an 
inalienable right to a share of that land which is God's gift to His 
creatures. I see that it is imjDossible for one man to be born into the 
world with a rightful share in that land, while another is born without 
it. God is just to His children. I see that none can rightfully dispossess 
his brother of his natural heritage." And so forth. And who shall say 
unto which of us '' it is given " to see most clearly ? Above all, let us 
refuse to rest until we have laid the foundations of a science of law on 
something more solid than natural rights of which each man must be his 
own judge. 

An incidental evil of this substitute for reasoning is the necessity it 
places us in of regarding rights as something absolute, and holding good 
for all times and for all societies. If every Eed Indian has a "right" to 
fish in the rivers of his country, so has every Welshman in his. If a 
Hindu has a "right" to maintenance by his family or clan, so has an 
Englishman. If every Scotchman has a "right" to a parliamentary vote, 
so has every Turk. This is to exclude law from the domain of evolution. 
But what ground have we for this ? Now that the animal and vegetable 
kingdom have been brought within that domain, now that human 
institutions, customs, habits, and even beliefs have been shown to be 
subject to general laws of development, what conceivable ground can we 
have for leaving ethics and nomology out in the cold, to be expounded on 
the ancient methods of dogmatism and supernaturalism ? Why should 
"rights" alone, of all things in nature, be absolute, immutable, and 
eternal ? This strange superstition must follow the others. Doubtless 
it has its origin deep down in the instinct of self-preservation. It is 
difficult and terrible to realise the fact that oneself is outside the circle of 
the " fittest," who only shall survive. There must be some reason why 
tue should not succumb. And so we clutch at the first straw held out to 
us — the Eight to Live. Presently follow the train of other rights with a 
like foundation, ending with " the inalienable right of every babe born 
into the world to a box at the opera." Whether we create our own 
Creator, and endow him with our own feelings and beliefs and sentiments, 
or draft a code of " natural laws " which are but the embodiment of our 
own notions of what ought to be, we do but make the ultimate appeal to 
our own selves. The creator which each moralist worships and calls in 
as arbiter is his own ideal creator, and by no means in perfect accord 
with the creator appealed to by his brother moralist. The mere affirmation 
of the existence of an interfering providence, or its denial, is not the point 
in question. Nor is it necessary to quarrel with the moralist who 
maintains that whatever eventually turns out to be the right view 
concerning conduct is the view taken by the Deity. Such assertions in 
no way vitiate the process of scientific inquiry. Such an attitude was 
adopted by Buckle without any prejudicial effect on the value of his 
conclusions. It is not the First Cause (intelligent or otherwise) towards 
which science is hostile. It is the wooden idol, the god made by each 
baffled investigator out of his own head, against which her denunciations 
are directed. 



XII ABSOLUTISM IN POLITICS 393 

Some time ago tlie following appeared in Justice^ the organ of the 
Social Democratic Federation (August 29, 1885): "What is the ideal 
towards which the spirit of the age is tending — the ideal to which the 
best and bravest throughout the world aspire ? It is the principle 
of equal justice to each and all, in all the relations of life, and through 
all the ramifications of society. It is equal liberty, equal opportunities 
for growth, for progress, for every human being, not excepting even one. 
The principle of justice is eternal, immutable, unchangeable. It is not 
one thing to-day and another to-morrow — not one thing in Europe and 
something else in Asia or Africa. Man existed long before society, as 
society existed long before Government. The rights of the individual 
are sacred. They can neither be alienated nor abdicated nor transferred. 
Society is but an aggregation of individuals, and it is sacred only in virtue 
of the sacredness of the rights of the individuals of which it is composed. 
The only legitimate basis of society is that of free association for equal 
advantage, for the mutual benefit of all its members. The violation of 
the rights of a single individual is an act of treason — is an act of war 
against humanity." 

I suppose there is hardly a word in this which might not have 
consistently appeared in Compulsion hy the State; but what is the 
conclusion which the writer draws from these lofty premisses ? " Let 
then the good and true of every class and of every nation grasp hands in 
the name of the Social Revolution, and let their cry be, Down with 
Landlordism ! Down with Usury ! and the reconstruction of society on 
a socialistic basis." 

Does not this bear out my contention, that from vague premisses 
anything may be apparently deduced which suits the fancy of the 
manipulator ? 

Every word in the above applies with equal force to much that is 
contained in Mr. Spencer's essay on " The Great Political Superstition," 
after which admission you will be justified in replying to me in the few 
but forcible words, Mallem mehercule errare cum Platone. 

However, in spite of all this "captious" criticism, I do not hesitate 
to say that I know of no book the extensive circulation of which is, 
in my opinion, calculated to do more unqualified good than your 
Compulsion. My quarrel is mainly with the speculative foundations 
on which you base your principles. — I am, my dear sir, yours truly, 

"Wordsworth Donisthorpe. 



THE END 



Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh 



